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Velev named S. Frank and Doris Culberson Distinguished Professor

NC State Engineering Belltower
Dr. Orlin Velev
Dr. Velev

Dr. Orlin Velev has been named an S. Frank and Doris Culberson Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University.

Velev has been a member of the NC State faculty since 2001.

He is an established research leader in colloid science and engineering. He leads an active and multidisciplinary research group at NC State that focuses on colloids, microfluidics and nanoscience with an emphasis on controlled assembly of colloidal particles into advanced materials and microscopic functional structures.

His work and publications have led to the establishment of innovative research in the areas of nanostructures with electrical and photonic functionality, biosensors, microfluidics and nanomanufacturing. He has been the first to synthesize “inverse opals,” one of the most widely studied types of photonic materials today. He has also pioneered techniques for making novel nanoparticle materials, Janus particles, rod-like particles and responsive foams. Technologies based on his research have formed the basis of two Research Triangle-area startup companies, Xanofi and Benanova.

Velev has given more than 220 invited presentations at major conferences and at universities and companies, contributed to more than 190 publications that have been cited more than 18,500 times, and developed and taught new graduate- and undergraduate-level courses, Colloid Science and Nanoscale Engineering and Special Topics in Nanoscience, both at NC State and TU-Berlin.

His many honors and awards include the Alcoa Foundation Distinguished Engineering Research Award, the Alumni Association Outstanding Research Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Ralph E. Powe Award and the Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering from AIChE. He was named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2011 and a Fellow of the Materials Research Society in 2017.

He received his B.S. and M.Sc. in chemical physics and theoretical chemistry in 1989 and his Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1996 from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria.