Snurr Receives Humboldt Research Award
The award won by Professor Randall Snurr honors internationally recognized researchers for their record of academic achievements.
Northwestern Engineering’s Randall Snurr has been awarded a Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The Humboldt Research Award honors internationally recognized researchers in recognition of their entire academic record to date. Along with a monetary prize, winners are invited to pursue research projects of their choosing in collaboration with colleagues in Germany.
Snurr plans to spend time at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, collaborating with research groups in the area of energy-efficient molecular separations.
“I am very much looking forward to spending an extended time in Germany and interacting with the world-class researchers, such as Professor Matthias Thommes, in Erlangen, as well as in other parts of Germany,” Snurr said. “I was a postdoc in Leipzig before joining Northwestern and still have friends and scientific colleagues there. I am very grateful to the Humboldt Foundation for this honor and for the opportunities that the award provides.”
Snurr, John G. Searle Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering, focuses his research on developing new nanoporous materials to solve important problems related to energy and sustainability. Snurr and his group have contributed to materials for hydrogen storage, CO₂ capture, energy-efficient separations, atmospheric water harvesting, and the capture of PFAS and other pollutants from water.
Snurr has made significant contributions to the development of computational tools for molecular-level modeling of adsorption and diffusion in nanoporous materials, including the creation of open-source software and databases used worldwide. He has been named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics from 2014 to 2025. He is currently on the advisory boards of several journals and will join the AIChE Journal as an associate editor in 2026. His work has been reported in approximately 350 publications with over 60,000 citations.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation supports outstanding international scientists and scholars, regardless of discipline or nationality, fostering a global network of academic collaboration and trust. Since 1972, its research awards have been a cornerstone of this support, with many recipients later receiving Nobel Prizes.