Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering Mark Orazem, Ph.D., refuses to do just one thing. Despite receiving early advice that he should “pick one thing and become the world’s leading expert,” Orazem said he couldn’t imagine that type of career.
In the area of electrochemical engineering, his research spans biomedical electrode chemistry, corrosion prevention and characterization, glucose sensors, energy systems such as batteries and fuel cells, semiconductors and electrokinetic separations. While he’s known for his contributions to batteries, Orazem will be the first to tell you he’s not a battery guy.
His wildly broad and distinguished career will be honored in May at ECS 2026, the 249th annual meeting of Orazem’s home society, the Electrochemical Society. Conference organizers chose to host “Advances in Industrial Electrochemistry and Electrochemical Engineering: In Honor of Mark Orazem” during the general session because his work extends across so many disciplines.
But he is a renowned expert in electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, a type of transfer-function measurement in which the response to a current or potential input can be used to assess system properties.
He has spent decades developing and testing modeling systems that interpret the impedance response data to provide meaningful results. He began data modeling in the 1980s with FORTRAN and has recently updated his modeling platform to run on Python code (with assistance from a student). The software, which by his own admission is “a cool program,” is freely available on his website and ECSArXiv.
That Orazem’s society is honoring his career as he edges toward retirement is not surprising to one of his closest collaborators, Vincent Vivier, Ph.D., of Sorbonne University in France. Vivier spoke of Orazem’s collaboration with his co-author, Bernard Tribollet, Ph.D.
“An especially important outcome of this long collaboration between Mark and Bernard is their book on electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. This book has become a reference work for many students and researchers worldwide, and it continues to play a central role in training new generations in the field,” Vivier said.
“Mark is not only an outstanding scientist,” he added, “he is also someone I deeply appreciate on a personal level. Our collaboration worked so well because of our strong complementarity, our shared rigor and his remarkable creativity. We always had the ability to sit down, around a table or over a good glass of wine, and truly think together, challenge ideas and move them forward.”
The 249th ECS Meeting will be held May 24–28 in Seattle.