Joan Brennecke

Joan F. Brennecke is an American chemical engineer who is the Cockrell Family Chair in Engineering in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Brennecke develops supercritical fluids, ionic liquids and novel spectroscopic methods.

Brennecke was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2012 for innovation in the use of ionic liquids and supercritical fluids for environmentally benign chemical processing.

She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data.

Early life and education Brennecke grew up along the Gulf Coast of the United States. As a child she lived in Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Kingston, Jamaica, and eventually settled in Victoria, Texas. She attended St. Joseph's High School, where she was valedictorian. She moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign for her graduate studies, earning her master's degree in 1987 and her doctoral degree in 1989. She was the first woman to be made professor in the engineering program at the University of Notre Dame.

Brennecke develops novel solvents, including ionic liquids and supercritical fluids. CISTAR is supported by the National Science Foundation and looks to make transportation fuels from natural gas. 2000 University of Notre Dame College of Engineering Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award 2001 American Chemical Society Ipatieff Prize 2006 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Professional Progress Award 2007 Conference on Properties and Phase Equilibria for Product and Process Design John M. Prausnitz Award 2008 American Chemical Society Julius Stieglitz Lecturer Award 2009 United States Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award 2011 Times Higher Education Top 100 Chemists 2014 Thomson Reuter's list of the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds 2015 University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Parr Lecturer

Selected publications

Brennecke was made Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Chemical & Engineering Data in 2010.