Klavs F. Jensen

Background and Education

Dr. Jensen was the head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT from 2007 through July 2015. He received his MSc in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include on-demand multistep synthesis, methods for automated synthesis, and machine learning techniques for chemical synthesis and interpreting large chemical data sets. He is a co-director of MIT's Pharma AI consortium that aims to bring machine learning technology into pharmaceutical discovery and development. Catalysis, chemical kinetics and transport phenomena are also topics of interest along with development of methods for predicting performance of reactive chemical systems. He is the co-author of more than 430 refereed journal and 175 conference publications as well as 8 edited volumes and 50 US patents. He chairs the Editorial Board for the new Royal Society of Chemistry Journal Reaction Chemistry and Engineering. He serves on advisory boards to universities, companies, professional societies, and governments. He is the recipient of several awards, including a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Allan P. Colburn, Charles C.M. Stine, R.H. Wilhelm, W.H. Walker, and Founders Awards of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He received the inaugural IUPAC-ThalesNano Prize in Flow Chemistry in 2012 and the inaugural Corning International Prize for Outstanding Work in Continuous Flow Reactors & Chemistry in 2018. Professor Jensen is a member of the US National Academies of Sciences and Engineering as well as the American Academy of Arts and Science. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Awards and Honors

• The Neal R. Amundson Award | 2023
• Elected Fellow, National Academy of Inventors | 2022
• Corning International Prize for Outstanding Work in Continuous Flow Reactors & Chemistry for a Greener and Safer World | 2018
• John Prausnitz AIChE Institute Lecturer Award | 2018
• Elected Member, National Academy of Sciences | 2017
• AIChE Founders Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Chemical Engineering | 2016
• IUPAC-ThalesNano International Prize | 2012
• AIChE William H. Walker Award for Excellence in Contributions to Chemical Engineering Literature | 2011
• Elected AIChE Fellow | 2009
• Elected Member, American Academy of Arts & Sciences | 2008
• Elected Fellow, Royal Society of Chemistry | 2004
• Elected Member, National Academy of Engineering | 2002
• R. H. Wilhelm Award, American Institute of Chemical Engineers | 2000
• Berkeley Lectures in Chemical Engineering, UC Berkeley | 2000
• Charles M.A. Stine Award, AIChE | 1995
• Allan P. Colburn Award, AIChE | 1987
• John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship | 1987
• Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award | 1987
• Presidential Young Investigator Award (NSF) | 1984
• Young Author's Award, Electrochemical Society | 1983