TSUS Names Chemistry Professor Regents’ Professor At Texas State

SAN MARCOS – William J. Brittain, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Texas State University, has been named a Regents’ Professor by the Texas State University System Board of Regents.

The board approved the honor during its quarterly meeting Nov. 15 in Huntsville.

The Regents’ Professor designation honors outstanding members of the System’s professoriate who have achieved excellence in teaching, research, publication and community service, while demonstrating an unwavering dedication to their students and university. Brittain is the 16th TSUS Regents’ Professor to be honored at Texas State.

It is a lifetime designation bestowed by the Board of Regents upon tenured full professors who have been acknowledged as exceptional by their peers and students and recommended by the TSUS Foundation Board of Directors, the chancellor and their university president.

Brittain came to Texas State in 2010 after building his career in higher education and industry. He is an internationally acclaimed researcher who pioneered research on polymers by co-authoring an authoritative review which has become a seminal work with more than 1,200 citations.

Brittain has been responsible for more than $5.5 million in grants, received three patents, co-edited the book “Polymer Brushes: Synthesis, Characterization and Applications,” published 123 peer-reviewed articles with an exceptionally high citation ratings making him the seventh most-cited author at Texas State, presented 71 conference proceedings, given more than 200 invited lectures and published 93 American Chemical Society (ACS) national meeting abstracts.

Brittain has served as vice president for global research with Bausch and Lomb in Rochester, New York, and program officer for the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.

He has received the GenCorp Signature Research Award, University of Akron Outstanding Researcher of the Year and the Distinguished Service Award from the ACS Division of Polymer Chemistry. He is also a fellow of the ACS Division of Polymer Chemistry.

As an educator, Brittain has supervised the research of 25 doctoral students, eight postdoctoral associates, 10 master’s students and 30 undergraduate students.

Under his leadership, the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has experienced growth in enrollment, the number of faculty and overall research production.