One faculty member and two graduate alumni from the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).
The new members are: Edward Maginn, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Engineering at Notre Dame; Massimo Morbidelli, who earned a doctorate in 1986 and is professor emeritus in the department of chemistry and applied biosciences at ETH Zurich; and Monica C. Regalbuto, who earned a doctorate in 1989 and is the vice president of science and technology at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.
Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer, honoring those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice or education.
“We are immensely proud to see our faculty and alumni honored with one of the highest distinctions in our profession,” said Patricia Culligan, the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering. “Their work—spanning applications in materials, energy, improved drug delivery systems and environmental remediation—demonstrates the ways in which engineering can help serve the needs of society.”
Edward Maginn, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is a globally recognized leader in research linking the physical properties of materials to their chemical composition.
Maginn’s research has had a major impact on chemical engineering by enabling engineers to design and optimize materials and processes at the molecular level for energy and environmental applications. By developing widely used computational tools and design methods, his research allows engineers to predict material performance before materials are synthesized, reducing development time, cost, and risk. These advances have helped move molecular simulation from a specialized research tool into a practical engineering approach used in academia, industry, and national laboratories worldwide.
For more details of Maginn’s election, visit here.
Massimo Morbidelli earned a doctorate in chemical engineering from Notre Dame in 1986. He joined the department of chemistry and applied biosciences at ETH Zurich in 1997, where he is now professor emeritus.
“I am honored and flattered to be elected to the NAE,” said Morbidelli. “My thoughts go to my Ph.D. advisor at Notre Dame, the late Professor Arvind Varma. He showed me the way to academic research when I knew nothing about it. He then followed me all along my career. I wish all younger colleagues to meet such a mentor at least once in their academic life.”
Morbidelli’s main research interests are in chemical reaction engineering, with particular emphasis on polymer reactions and colloidal engineering. More recently he moved to the development and digitalization of processes for the production of biopharmaceuticals. His contributions in the area of end-to-end integrated continuous bioprocesses have been recognized by awards from both the ACS and the AIChE and provided the motivation for his election at the NAE.
Author or co-author of six books and more than 700 papers, Morbidelli also holds 11 international patents. He serves as an executive editor of the American Chemical Society journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research and is a member of the boards of several international scientific journals.
He is the recipient of the 2005 R.H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the 2014 Gerhard Damköhler Medal from the German Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. In 2019 he became the only chemical engineer elected to the Italian Academy of Sciences (Accademia dei Lincei) and in 2023 he was awarded the Advanced Grant Continuous Digitalized Bioprocesses by the European Research Council.
Morbidelli is also a cofounder of ChromaCon Ltd., currently part of YMC, Japan, and of DataHow, Zurich, a company which develops digital solutions for process development and manufacturing in the biopharmaceutical industry.
Monica C. Regalbuto, who earned a doctorate in chemical engineering from Notre Dame in 1989, is a leader in the development of nuclear fuel cycle technologies and has more than 30 years of experience in radio-isotope processing, recovery and immobilization for environmental remediation, resource conservation and medical applications.
She is currently vice president of science and technology at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. There, she oversees a research program that pursues new opportunities and investments, including nuclear innovation efforts aimed at contributing to better health outcomes through advancements in nuclear medicine and building a more sustainable energy system that advances Canada’s climate goals.
“Being elected to the National Academy of Engineering is an incredible honor,” said Regalbuto. “It’s been a privilege to contribute to the engineering profession and advancements in the nuclear industry, and I’m very grateful for my graduate experience at Notre Dame.”
Previously, Regalbuto led the development of the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle strategy at the Idaho National Laboratory and served as the assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management for the U.S. Department of Energy, where she was responsible for managing environmental cleanup across 16 sites in 11 states.
Regalbuto has also held senior technical and leadership roles across a number of U.S. federal organizations, including the Argonne National Laboratory. She represented U.S. interests at the Fukushima cleanup in Japan, the Republic of Korea Joint Fuel Cycle Study, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management.
In 2023, Regalbuto was honored at Notre Dame with the Distinguished Graduate Alumni Award, an award given annually to a graduate alumnus or alumna who has contributed significantly to scholarship, research or society.
Members of the newly elected class will be formally inducted during the NAE’s annual meeting in October 2026.
—Mary Hendriksen, Notre Dame Engineering