Past Funded Researchers
Karen Gleason
- Alexander and I. Michael Kasser (1960) Professor
- Associate Provost
- Department of Chemical Engineering
Dr. Karen K. Gleason is currently Associate Provost and the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. Her Ph.D. is from the University of California at Berkeley. Her B.S. and M.S. degrees are from MIT, where she also won All-American honors in swimming. Her research focuses on the near room-temperature synthesis of ultrathin, conformal organic films by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Prof. Gleason has authored >250 publications and holds 18 issued US Patents for CVD polymers and their applications in optoelectronic, sensing, microfluidic, energy storage, and biomedical devices, and also for the surface modification of membranes. At MIT, she has served as Executive Officer of the Chemical Engineering Department; Associate Director for the Institute of Soldier Nanotechnologies; and as Associate Dean of Engineering for Research. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE), and was the Donders Visiting Professorship Chair at Utrecht University, Netherlands. Her awards include the ID TechEx Printed Electronics Europe Best Technical Development Materials Award, the AIChE Process Development Research Award, and Young Investigator Awards from both the NSF and the ONR. She has delivered the Van Ness Award Lecture at the Rensselaer Polytechnic University and the Tis Lahiri Lecture at Vanderbuilt University. Prof Gleason co-founded GVD Corporation, which has successfully scaled-up and commercialized technology invented in her MIT lab. GVD is headquartered in Cambridge, MA and has manufacturing facilities in Greenville, SC.