Dr. Velev Receives the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Extension

Dr. Orlin Velev, the INVISTA Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been selected as the 33rd recipient of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Extension. The Award is the most prestigious award the College of Engineering bestows upon a faculty member.

Professor Velev has established a record of innovative research in the areas of nanostructures with electrical and photonic functionality, biosensors, microfluidics and nanomanufacturing. He’s the first researcher to synthesize “inverse opals”, one of the most widely studied types of photonic materials today, and he pioneered techniques for making novel nanoparticle materials, Janus particles, rod-like particles and responsive foams.

More recently, members of his research group have developed a technique for 3-D printing of flexible and porous silicone rubber structures in a dry or a wet environment, suggesting that it has the potential to be used with live tissue, and they’ve developed a way to assemble and pre-program tiny structures made from microscopic cubes – “microbot origami” – that change their shape when actuated by a magnetic field. The microbots perform a variety of tasks – including capturing and transporting single cells.

Professor Velev also has the distinction of being named a Fellow in two professional societies: the Materials Research Society and the American Chemical Society. Only small percentages of engineers and scientists are selected as Fellows of one technical society.

Technologies based on Professor Velev’s research have formed the basis of two Research Triangle Area startup companies, Xanofi and Benanova.

The Award ceremony and talk, “Engineering of Dynamically Reconfigurable Soft Matter: Smart Particle Gels, Biomimetic Actuators and Self-Propelling Microbots”, will be held on Tuesday, November 14, 2017, from 3 – 5 pm at the Larry K. Monteith Engineering Research Center,

Congratulations Professor Velev for this well-deserved honor!