Paulson earns outstanding young researcher award

Joel Paulson, the Gerald and Louise Battist Associate Professor in chemical and biological engineering, received the 2026 CAST Outstanding Young Researcher Award. This award is given to individuals under the age of 40 to recognize outstanding contributions to the chemical engineering computing and systems technology literature.

His research develops and analyzes adaptive artificial intelligence and machine learning methods that integrate data, first-principles models, optimization, and uncertainty to support decision-making in complex, multi-scale engineering and scientific systems. An emerging focus of his group is tailoring these methods for autonomous scientific discovery and “self-driving” laboratories, where closed-loop learning approaches can significantly accelerate the exploration, optimization, and characterization of chemical, biological, and materials spaces.

A version of this article was originally published by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.