Dr. Priyanka Sharma is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Western Michigan University. She has authored more than 50 research articles and book chapters in esteemed journals, 35 conference papers, and holds 5 U.S. patents with 9 additional patents pending. Her key research focuses on understanding the structural complexity of cellulose polymers to develop sustainable processing methods and tailor their functional properties for environmental and energy-related applications. Her accomplishments in cellulose chemistry include pioneering spherical-shaped cellulose nanoparticles derived from cotton linter and developing a one-step nitro-oxidation process to produce cellulose nanofibers.

​             Sharma has received numerous prestigious recognitions from both national and international scientific communities. She is the co-recipient of the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water 2020 (The Creativity Prize). She also received the Blavatnik Young Scientist Award-2018 from the New York Academy of Sciences and the SBU-National Academic Inventor’s Award 2020. Sharma was also a finalist in the Women in Science Incentive Prize 2020 and the Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) Faculty Award 2018 from the DST, India.

Sharma is a laureate of the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Chemical Society. She has also served on the NSF reviewer panel and on the editorial boards of Discover Applied Sciences (Springer), Carbohydrate Polymer Technologies and Applications (Science Direct), Scientific Reports (Nature), Frontiers in Nanotechnology, Polymers, and Journal of Renewable Materials. Additionally, she has been part of the reviewer panels for numerous journals, including Biomacromolecules, ChemSusChem, Carbohydrate Polymers, Cellulose, Membranes, ACS Applied Nanomaterials, Scientific Reports, Catalysis, and Polymers.