Distinguished Su Lectureship

Su image

With the establishment of the Su Conference Room and the Su Distinguished Lecture Series, the University of Rochester joins the Su family in honoring Professor Su's long and distinguished career in Chemical Engineering and the spirit with which he pursued it.

For more information see about the lectureship below.


The 21st G.J. and S.T. Su Distinguished LectureshipKristin Persson

Speaker: Professor Eray S. Aydil
             NYU/Tandon School of Engineering

Date: April 17, 2024

Lecture room: Hawkins-Carlson Room (RRL)

Seminar: 11:30am, Luncheon to follow

Weblink:https://engineering.nyu.edu/faculty/eray-aydil

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About the Lectureship

In honor of Professor Gouq-Jen Su (1908-1996)

Professor Su lived a long and productive life, dedicated to the pursuit of ideas and ideals. He was born in 1908 in Fukien, a coastal province in the southern region of China. He attended a Northern Baptist missionary school as a teenager. In 1931, at the age of 23, Professor Su graduated from Tsing Hua University in Peking. In 1934, Gouq-Jen Su was one of the several college graduates selected, through a nation-wide examination, to further his studies at the graduate level, in the United States. That summer, he journeyed to MIT to continue his studies and, in three years, received his D.Sc. degree.

During World War II, Dr. Su served for four years as chairman of the Chemical Engineering Department at Tsing Hua University. He helped design and operate an alcohol fermentation plant and a sugar refinery in Kunming. The alcohol produced was mixed with gasoline and was utilized as liquid fuel for U.S. Army motor vehicles traveling on the Burma Road, some forty years ahead of gasohol.

Professor Su joined our faculty at the University of Rochester in 1947 and retired in 1974, though continuing as Emeritus for the remainder of his life. Over his active fifty-year career, Professor Su supervised 33 master's students and 15 doctoral students. Among his numerous publications, his outstanding papers on applied thermodynamics have been widely cited and are considered landmarks in the field. He proposed a modified form of the van der Waals Law of Corresponding States. Every thermodynamics textbook, to this day, contains his generalized equations of state for real gases.

Shou-Tsung Su grew up and was schooled in a family complex which is now a National Museum and was the location for the movie “Raise the Red Lantern”. She left home to attend Nankai High School in Tianjin and was one of a handful of women to graduate from the prestigious Tsing Hua University, where she majored in chemistry and met Gouq-Jen Su. Shou-Tsung was an award-winning painter of Chinese watercolors, loved gardening, cooking

Past Lecturers

Past Su Distinguished Lecturers
DateLecturerInstitution
20thApril 19, 2023Professor Kristin PerssonUC Berkeley/LBNL
19thApril, 6, 2022Professor Thomas JaramilloStanford University
18thMarch 17, 2021Professor Alexis BellUniversity of California-Berkley
17thApril 18, 2019Professor Daniel G. NoceraHarvard University
16thApril 25, 2018Professor Carol HallNorth Carolina State University
15thApril 26, 2017Professor Linda J. BroadbeltNorthwestern University
14thApril 27, 2016Professor Paula T. HammondMassachusetts Institute of Technology
13thApril 29, 2015Professor Ching TangUniversity of Rochester
12thApril 23, 2014Professor Donald R. PaulUniversity of Texas at Austin
11thMay 1, 2013Professor Christopher N. BowmenUniversity of Colorado Boulder
10thApril 25, 2012Professor James C. LiaoUniversity of California, Los Angeles
9thMay 5, 2010Professor Brian KorgelUniversity of Texas at Austin
8thMay 20, 2009Professor Tobin MarksNorthwestern University
7thApril 30, 2008Professor Joseph M. DeSimoneUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
6thMarch 22, 2007Professor Michael GraetzelSwiss Federal Institute of Technology
5thApril 26, 2006Professor Eric W. KalerUniversity of Delaware
4thApril 25, 2005Professor Hector D. AbrunaCornell University
3rdApril 13, 2004Professor Thomas A. ZawodzinskiCase Western University
2ndMay 9, 2003Professor Jacob IsraelachviliUniversity of California, Santa Barbara
1stApril 24, 2002Professor Jackie YingMassachusetts Institute of Technology