Benjamin S. Hsiao

Dr. Benjamin S. Hsiao is a Distinguished Professor in Chemistry at Stony Brook University. He received his B.S. degree from National Taiwan University in 1980, his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Connecticut in 1984 and 1987, respectively, and his post-doctorate training at the University of Massachusetts. He spent eight years in R&D as a staff scientist at the DuPont Company prior to joining Stony Brook University, where he has served as Chair of the Chemistry Department and Vice President for Research. Dr. Hsiao is a Founding Co-Director of the Innovative Global Energy Solutions Center, aiming to prototype “sustainability for off-grid communities of tomorrow,” using the Turkana Basin in northern Kenya as a living laboratory. He is also the Founding Director of the Center for Advanced Technology in Integrated Electric Energy Systems, which aims to enhance the development and integration of advanced technologies into electric energy systems on multiple scales.

Dr. Hsiao’s current research interests focus on the development of sustainable nanomaterials from underutilized biomasses for water pufication. He has published over 490 peer-reviewed scientific papers, 49 reviews and chapters in books and encyclopedias, 228 conference proceedings, obtained 36 issued patents (including 26 U.S. patents and has 21 pending patent applications), and has edited two books. He’s a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the American Chemical Society, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the Materials Research Society, and Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He is a AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador, an Hononary Professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, and a Chang-Jiang Scholar from the Education Ministry of China. He received a Cooperative Research Award from the Division of Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering of the American Chemical Society and is a NSF Special Creativity Award and DuPont Young Faculty Award winner.