Faculty Profiles

Capsule Bio:

Dr. Opatkiewicz received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 2012. Prior to that, he received his B.S. in both Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Engineering from U.C. Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Dr. Opatkiewicz created and taught the course “Mathematical Techniques for Chemical Engineers” while still a student. At Stanford, he received multiple teaching awards, including the 2010 Stanford University Centennial Teaching Assistant Award. Following his thesis defense, he was hired to serve as a research mentor in the Bao group at Stanford as well as teach introductory core courses for Chemical Engineering undergraduates.

Dr. Opatkiewicz joined the Department of NanoEngineering at UC San Diego (now the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering) in 2012 to lecture a variety of the core courses in the Chemical Engineering curriculum. Since then, he has taught almost every upper division course in the curriculum and created the elective course “Process Technology in the Semiconductor Industry”. He has gone on to win numerous teaching awards, including Department of NanoEngineering Teacher of the Year (2013), Jacobs School of Engineering Professor of the Year (2014 and 2015), Sixth College Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award (2014 and 2017), Warren College Outstanding Teacher Award (2015), and Tau Beta Pi Faculty of the Year (2018). As a highly rated instructor, Dr. Opatkiewicz is expected to continue his passion for teaching as long as he remains at UC San Diego.