9:05 a.m., July 1, 2008--Maciek R. Antoniewicz, UD assistant professor of chemical engineering, was recently honored by the DuPont Co. as one of 17 young professors from universities in the United States, China, Spain and India with the annual DuPont Young Professor Grant for original research. This innovative grant program is designed to provide start-up assistance to promising young and untenured research faculty working in areas aligned with DuPont's strategic business growth.

Antoniewicz will receive a grant of $25,000 per year for three years. The grant may be used to obtain matching funds through the National Science Foundation or other organizations. His research interests include metabolic engineering and systems biology and engineering microbial cells for production of biofuels and biochemicals.

“Maciek is a talented scientist whom we were fortunate to have on staff at the DuPont Experimental Station last year before he accepted his current assignment at the University of Delaware,” said Uma Chowdhry, DuPont senior vice president and chief science and technology officer. “We will continue to be interested in his research as he pursues sustainable biofuels technologies.”

“My proposed research at the University of Delaware will focus on the study and manipulation of biological systems for the production of sustainable energy sources for biofuels,” Antoniewicz said. “The importance of this research has been recognized worldwide and is gaining in significance.”

Norman Wagner, Stiles Professor of Chemical Engineering and chairperson of the Department of Chemical Engineering, said that he and his collegues are "proud of the achievements and promise of Maciek and his research. Maciek is part of our strategic effort to hire the best and brightest faculty whose research directly confronts one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, sustainable energy production. We are also pleased to have DuPont as a financial and intellectual partner in this research. Maciek joins many of our faculty as awardees of the Dupont Young Faculty award, which is an enabling research grant that can aid in exploring and generating initial data on new research avenues."

Antoniewicz received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Delft University in the Netherlands and received his doctorate in chemical engineering in 2006 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received the DuPont-MIT Fellowship from 2001-2006. He joined the UD faculty in 2007 after serving as a postdoctoral scientist with DuPont in Central Research and Development. In addition, Antoniewicz received a UD Research Foundation Award for 2008.