Biography of Elsa Reichmanis

Elsa Reichmanis is Professor and Carl Robert Anderson Chair in Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University. Prior to joining Lehigh, she was Professor and Pete Silas Chair in Chemical Engineering in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She started her independent career at Bell Labs where she was Bell Labs Fellow and Director of the Materials Research Department. She received her Ph. D. and BS degrees in chemistry from Syracuse University. Her research interests include the chemistry, properties and application of materials technologies for photonic and electronic applications. She has had impact in the design of new imaging chemistries for advanced lithographic applications, and designed one of the first, readily accessible and manufacturable polymers for advanced silicon device manufacturing using 193 nm lithography. The Reichmanis research group is currently exploring polymeric and hybrid organic/inorganic materials chemistries for a range of electronic device and sustainable energy applications. Her research, at the interface of chemical engineering, chemistry, materials science, optics, and electronics, spans from fundamental concept to technology development and implementation, with particular focus on polymeric and nanostructured materials for advanced technologies.

Elsa Reichmanis was elected as Member to the National Academy of Engineering in 1995 and Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2021. She served as 2003 President of the American Chemical Society (ACS), is a past member of the Bureau of the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), and is currently a Member of the Board of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). Elsa Reichmanis is the recipient of several awards, including the 2018 AIChE Margaret H. Rousseau Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement by a Woman Chemical Engineer, ACS Awards in the Chemistry of Materials (2018) and Applied Polymer Science (1999), the IUPAC Distinguished Woman in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Award (2013), the ASM Engineering Materials Achievement Award (1996), and the Society of Chemical Industry’s Perkin Medal (2001). She is a Fellow of the ACS, AIChE, Materials Research Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry. In other service, she is an Executive Editor of the ACS Journal, Chemistry of Materials.