Kenneth S. Suslick

Biosketch

Kenneth S. Suslick is the Marvin T. Schmidt Professor, Emeritus, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor Suslick received his B.S. from Caltech in 1974 and his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1978, and came to the UIUC immediately thereafter. He has received (from the RSC) the Centenary Prize, the Theophilus Redwood Award, and the Sir George Stokes Medal; the Materials Research Society Medal; and from the ACS both the Nobel Laureate Signature Award and the Hildebrand Award in the Chemistry of Liquids. He is also the recipient of the Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary Medal of the Acoustical Society of America and the Chemical Pioneer Award of the American Institute of Chemists. In 2018-2019, Suslick was the George Eastman Professor at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Balliol College. Professor Suslick has published more than 430 scientific papers, edited four books, and holds 71 patents and patent applications. He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, , the Materials Research Society, the Acoustical Society of America, the American Physical Society, the National Academy of Inventors, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the NAS.

Research Interests

Professor Suslick's three major research areas are the chemical effects of ultrasound (sonochemistry and sonoluminescence), the mechanochemistry and shockwave dissipation of metal-organic frameworks, and chemical sensing. Most recently, Suslick invented colorimetric sensor arrays and developed and commercialized the "optoelectronic nose". This has found important applications in detection of toxic gases and explosives, discrimination among complex odorants, and rapid diagnosis of disease based on smell. In addition to academic research, Suslick has had significant entrepreneurial experience. He was the lead consultant for Molecular Biosystems Inc. and part of the team that commercialized the first echo contrast agent for medical sonography, Albunex™, which became Optison™. In addition, he was the founding consultant for VivoRx Pharmaceuticals and co-inventor of one of the first FDA-approved nanopharmacueticals, Abraxane™ (serum albumin microspheres with a paclitaxel core), which is a dominant current delivery system for taxol chemotherapy. His sensor technology was commercialized by two companies that Suslick co-founded: iSense Systems and Specific Diagnostics (both in Silicon Valley). Specific Diagnostics developed colorimetric arrays for the rapid diagnosis of sepsis and antibiotic susceptibility testing and was acquired by bioMérieux. He is currently founder and CEO of a new start-up, Iridescent Sensors, which is pursuing non-biomedical applications of the optoelectronic nose.