The award recognizes outstanding accomplishments in fundamental or applied chemical engineering research. Panagiotopoulos, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, was honored “for novel approaches and transformative insights into the thermodynamics, structure, and dynamics in complex mixtures, especially electrolyte solutions, colloidal crystals, and intrinsically disordered proteins.”

Panagiotopoulos develops computer simulation techniques to study fluids and materials, with a focus on molecular interactions. His group’s work has revealed materials’ behavior in ways that go beyond experimental data, mathematically linking macroscopic properties to their microscopic foundations and enabling simulations that had previously been considered out of reach. Insights from his work have been used across many applications in chemical engineering, including energy and health. 

Panagiotopoulos is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of AIChE. He joined the Princeton faculty in 2000 and served as chair of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering from 2016 to 2022. He earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his bachelor’s degree from the National Technical University of Athens. He has published more than 300 technical papers and is the author of “Essential Thermodynamics,” an undergraduate textbook on the topic. In 2020, he was awarded Princeton Engineering’s Distinguished Teacher Award, honoring the clarity of his teaching and his deep concern for students’ education.