October 19, 2023 - Dibakar Bhattacharyya (2023 Great Teacher)

Behind the Blue

LEXINGTON, Ky. (October 19, 2023) – The University of Kentucky Alumni Association started the Great Teacher Award program in 1961 to honor excellent teaching at the university. There have been more than 300 teachers honored since that first year. Nominations may only be submitted by current students.

To receive the award, a candidate must: •

• Hold the rank of full-time lecturer or above and have been a member of the faculty for the past three years at UK.
• Have superior knowledge of the subject matter.
• Have original and innovative classroom presentations.
• Demonstrate concern for students, both inside and outside the classroom setting.
• Not have been a recipient of the award for the past 10 years.

A committee of the UK Alumni Association Board of Directors and a representative from the student organization Omicron Delta Kappa select the recipients based on objective rating and ranking of the eligible nominations submitted.

This episode of Behind the Blue spotlights one of the six 2023 Great Teacher Award winners. University of Kentucky Alumni Chair Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering Dibakar Bhattacharyya is also the director of the UK Center of Membrane Sciences. In addition, he is a co-principal investigator of the UK National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research Program and is renowned for his research on membranes for filtering and producing clean water. Bhattacharyya, universally known as “DB,” has been an educator for more than 50 years at UK.

With its enormous amount of environmental research activity with students and recent extension to virus aerosol decontamination area, UK has received extensive international recognition, and Bhattacharyya’s students have as well. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the North American Membrane Society. He previously won the Great Teacher Award in 1984, 1996 and 2008, and he is the 2021 recipient of the SEC Outstanding Faculty Achievement Award.

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