CSE professor named 2026 Faculty Innovator of the Year

Thirteen projects from CSE students and faculty were featured at the 2026 Founder’s Day Event

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (05/20/2026) — University of Minnesota Twin Cities Professor Paul Dauenhauer was honored with the “Faculty Innovator of the Year” award at the 2026 University of Minnesota Founder’s Day.

Dauenhauer, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, MacArthur Fellow, and the Director for the Center for Programmable Energy Catalysis is the co-founder of four start-up companies: Lakril Technologies, Sironix Renewables, Carba and Activated Research Company.

His research engineers catalysts for sustainable energy and materials to solve the challenge of producing energy with limited environmental impact. He uses catalysts to control specific reactions to convert water, nitrogen and carbon dioxide to manufacture carbon-neutral fuels and chemicals with increased sustainability.

Dauenhauer has developed an entirely new class of surfactants — chemical compounds that enable cleaning agents to mix with water. These compounds, which help cleaning agents mix with water, could replace the oil-based versions found in many products like detergents, soaps, and personal care items. As part of startup company Sironix Renewables, Dauenhauer’s surfactants called Furasoft^TM have increased sustainability, biodegradability and exhibit novel and desirable properties not found in conventional detergents.

More recently, Dauenhauer invented a new class of catalysts that could selectively manufacture acrylic acid and acrylates from corn. This new process, being developed by Lakril Technologies, creates materials that are just as affordable as those made from fossil fuels, while significantly reducing carbon emissions. This technology was named a Top 10 Start-Up by the American Chemical Society in 2025.

In 2021, Dauenhauer co-founded Carba, a Minnesota startup focused on the most effective chemical way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carba's pilot facility is already making carbon credits—which represent a reduction in emissions — more affordably than anyone else, with the potential to scale up to over a billion tonnes of CO₂ removal annually.

Dauenhauer’s laboratory at the University of Minnesota has also demonstrated new methods for producing high yields of p-xylene — a key chemical for making polyester and plastics like soda bottles — and isoprene and butadiene — a critical component of synthetic rubbers. These chemicals are made from renewable resources like wood, crop waste, and other refuse, and they match the quality and cost of those made from oil.

Dauenhauer's first breakthrough was the world’s first 3D-printed microreactor — a tiny, advanced chemical device — commercialized by Activated Research Company in Eden Prairie, Minn. This technology greatly improved the process of analyzing complex chemical mixtures, making it easier and more precise. This technology was sold to Shimadzu Corporation in 2025.

Dauenhauer received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota Department of Chemical Engineering Materials Science under the mentorship of longtime University of Minnesota Professor Lanny Schmidt.

Learn more about Dauenhauer’s research on the Catalysis, Separations & Reaction Engineering website.

Other CSE Founders Day Award-winners

SynDex, a surgical training interface, developed by students Hunter Johnson, Mitchell Salzman, Yossef Emara and Sabrina Simkhovich won the Best Overall Award at the event.

Other College of Science and Engineering student and faculty projects that were featured at the event included:

• Artifact - Soham Gupta, Krishna Ravat, Arvind Maran and Samarth Nand
• Cartron - Lalitaditya Divakarla, Rushikesh Zende, Ajay Kumar Gurumadaiah, Vivek Kumar, Tejas Chavan and Pritish Vitekar
• DecodeTheMind - Kevin Vo, Raymond Zhao, Nikhil Iyer, Ethan Chung, Alex Wan and Levi Krogh
• DPNdable (formerly Biotactix) - Rylan Chung, Chris Nguyen, Paulo Dietrich and Sowmik Garishakurti
• Fire Computing (formerly GPU Furnaces: Distributed Datacenters) - Riley O’Neill
• Minotiq - Lucas Duba
• Mosaic - Sebastian Plunkett
• Multimodal Quadriplegic Assistance Device - Sergey Barabanoff, Yona Ketema, Khidhr Kotaria and Josiah De Leon
• NCVX-fMRI - Anh Do, Isaac Blommel and Gavin Phillips
• Powered Leg Brace - Jason Wu and Rasa Abbas
• Prep Nova - Rohan Dham, Aki Gupta and Abhinav Kamatgi
• Remote Calibration Aid for SSD Measurements - Tanushka Samara, Faduma Mohamed, Caleb Dewbery, Sophia Li, Noah Roth, Tsering Yangdon and Landon Stafsholt
• SkinDL - Nikhil Iyer and Rohan Iyer
• X-ray Projection - Yaqub Hashi, Jinho Jeon, Abdullah Shahkhan, Ian Andrea, John Newburn and Matthew Notaro

The 14th annual Founder’s Day was co-hosted by the Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship in the Carlson School of Management and the University of Minnesota Libraries.