Biographical Sketch
Pablo Debenedetti is the Class of 1950 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science, Vice Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Professor of Chemical Engineering, at Princeton University. He obtained his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Buenos Aires University, Argentina, in 1978, and M.S. (1981) and Ph.D. (1985) degrees, also in Chemical Engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1978 to 1980 he was Process Development Engineer with O. de Nora, Impianti Elettrochimici, Milan, Italy.
His research interests include the thermodynamics and statistical mechanics of liquids, liquid mixtures and glasses, especially water and aqueous solutions; protein thermodynamics; the stabilization of biomolecules in glassy matrices; nucleation theory; and metastable liquids, especially supercooled liquids. He has written one book, Metastable Liquids. Concepts and Principles (Princeton, 1996), and authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific and technical articles.
Research in Pablo Debenedetti's group has helped define the current state of basic knowledge on the properties of metastable liquids and glasses, in particular water, and brought this vast field to the mainstream of chemical engineering thermodynamics. In addition to the intrinsic value of an improved understanding of the liquid state of matter, the implications of this work include the formulation and preservation of pharmaceutical products; the prevention of vapor explosions in the cryogenic, metals processing, and paper industries; the inhibition of clathrate hydrate formation in natural gas pipelines; life at low temperatures; the properties of comets; and the stability of proteins at extremes of pressure and temperature. By applying chemical engineering thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and molecular simulation, his group
- developed the first microscopic theory of liquid-liquid immiscibility in single-component fluids (62, 76)
- provided the first direct evidence, by molecular simulation of phase coexistence, of liquid-liquid immiscibility in a pure substance (66, 76) (with A.Z. Panagiotopoulos)
- obtained experimental confirmation and provided a concurrent thermodynamic explanation of continuity between liquid and glassy water (60) (with R.J. Speedy and B.D. Kay)
- obtained the first direct evidence, from molecular simulation, of the connection between the dynamics of a glass-forming liquid and its potential energy surface (energy landscape) (74, 94) (with F.H. Stillinger)
- developed the statistical mechanical formalism of fluids under constraints, that enables the rigorous theoretical and computational treatment of liquids outside their normal range of stability (67) (with F.H. Stillinger)
- developed the first exact method for calculating void volume, surface area and connectivity in sphere packings, with applications to the characterization of disordered materials, flow through porous media, protein solvation, and the thermodynamics of hard spheres (69)
- developed a theory of associating fluids that reproduces the salient thermodynamic anomalies of liquid water (87) (with S. Torquato) and the thermodynamic signatures of hydrophobic hydration (109)
- developed new analytical methods for the quantification of disorder in materials (96, 97, 119) (with S. Torquato)
- developed the concept of an energy landscape’s equation of state (91, 120) (with F.H. Stillinger and F.Sciortino)
- demonstrated scaling behavior in the energetics of bubble nucleation (104)
- derived a fully kinetic theory of bubble nucleation (118)
- derived the relationship between the Kauzmann and spinodal curves of a metastable liquid (70, 91) (with F.H. Stillinger)
- demonstrated the relationship between structural order and the anomalies of liquid water (102,144)
- derived the first statistical mechanical model of inverse melting (123) (with F. H. Stillinger)
- extended the energy landscape formalism to saddles (131)
- derived a new expression for the diffusion coefficient and applied this new formalism to the study of dynamic heterogeneity in supercooled liquids (142,147,148) (with F.H. Stillinger)
- performed the first simultaneous measurements of structural and thermodynamic effects of carbohydrates on the stability of proteins (137) (with J.D. Carbeck)
- performed the first theoretical investigation of the phase behavior of mixtures in which one component can have more than one critical point (153)
In the area of supercritical fluids, his group
- was the first to use supercritical fluids to obtain biologically-active protein powders suitable for direct delivery to the lungs (39, 50, 58, 68, 84)
- demonstrated the potential of supercritical fluids as a medium for the formation of particulates in the pharmaceutical industry (33, 34)
- performed the first molecular simulation studies of solvation in supercritical fluids (24)
- provided the first direct comparison between simulations and spectroscopic measurements of local density augmentations in supercritical systems (book chapters 5)
- developed the widely used attractive/weakly attractive/repulsive classification for dilute supercritical mixtures (29)
- predicted (22), and confirmed by simulation (24) and integral equation calculations (44), the formation of long-ranged correlation holes around repulsive solutes
- developed a mathematical description of mass transfer in the supercritical anti-solvent (SAS) process (92, 99, 123)
He is the recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator (National Science Foundation, 1987) and Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar (1989) awards, a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1991), the Professional Progress Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (1997), the John M. Prausnitz Award in Applied Chemical Thermodynamics (2001), the Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in the Theoretical and Experimental Chemistry of Liquids from the American Chemical Society (2008), and the William H. Walker Award for Excellence in Contributions to the Chemical Engineering Literature from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (2008). Metastable Liquids (1996) was named “best scholarly/professional book in Chemistry” by the Association of American Publishers. He has delivered the Robert W. Vaughan Memorial Lecture at the California Institute of Technology (1992), the Stanley W. Katz Memorial Lecture at the City College of the City University of New York (1997), the Kurt Wohl Memorial Lecture at the University of Delaware (1997), the Ashton Cary Lecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology (1998), the Collaboratus Lecture at Rutgers University (2003), the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Area 1a Keynote lecture (2003), the Berkeley Lectures in Chemical Engineering (2003), the Donald L. Katz Lectureship in Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan (2005), the Patten Distinguished Lecture at the University of Colorado, Boulder (2006), the Reilly Lectureship in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Notre Dame (2007), the Michael Abbott Lecture at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2007), the Joe Smith Distinguished Lecture at the University of California, Davis (2007), the Kelly Lectures at Purdue University (2008), and the Hunter Henry Lecture at Mississippi State University (2008). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
* Numbers in parenthesis refer to articles in the chronological bibliography. .
