Thatcher Root's Biography

Thatcher Root, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin

Thatcher Root received his undergraduate degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. His graduate studies in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota working with Prof. Lanny Schmidt in catalysis and surface chemistry led to his PhD in 1984. He was a postdoctoral member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories with T. Michael Duncan (now at Cornell), where he developed applications of solid-state NMR for study of heterogeneous catalysts. Since 1986 he has been on the faculty in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. The scope of his research in catalyst fundamentals and heterogeneous catalysis spans a range of green chemistry areas, including use of zeolites for selective processes, environmentally benign partial oxidation chemistry (including collaboration in the MadOx consortium of Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, and UW), and chemical storage systems for solar power. He has a strong interest in specialized reactor design for applications to these systems.