Mikos honored with distinguished educator award

Rice professor Antonios Mikos has won the prestigious Chemstations Lectureship Award, given by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). Sponsored by Chemstations Inc., a maker of software for chemical process and molecular simulation, the annual award goes to a distinguished engineering educator.

Mikos is the Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and director of the John W. Cox Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering. His research focuses on the synthesis, processing and evaluation of new biomaterials for use as scaffolds for tissue engineering, as carriers for controlled drug delivery and as nonviral vectors for gene therapy. He earned his doctorate at Purdue University and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School before joining Rice as an assistant professor in 1992.

“This is a great honor for me and my laboratory, and I’m delighted to have the opportunity to give a presentation about my scholarship,” said Mikos, who will speak at the annual ASEE conference June 14-17 in Austin, Texas. “It’s special to me that this award recognizes educational achievement. I’m very proud of all the graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, in addition to numerous undergraduate students, I have mentored here at Rice. Many of them have continued to become leading young faculty at universities in the U.S. and around the globe.”

Mikos, who has written a standard textbook, Biomaterials: The Intersection of Biology and Materials Science, and edited 10 books, noted the nation’s first graduate course in the field of tissue engineering was offered at Rice. He also organizes the continuing education course Advances in Tissue Engineering, which has been offered every August at Rice for the past 17 years.

The Chemstations award honors an educator who demonstrates achievement through “the formulation of fundamental theory or principles, improvements of lasting influence to chemical engineering education … and the demonstration of success as a teacher,” according to the ASEE Web site.

“I am most thankful to Kyriacos Zygourakis for nominating me for this award,” Mikos said. Zygourakis is the A.J. Hartsook Chair and chairman of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Mike Williams, Rice News