Illinois chemistry alumna Hye Kyung Timken has enjoyed science since she was very young. In high school, she fell in love with chemistry and has never looked back. As a Principal Scientist and Chevron Fellow, she has devoted her 38-year industrial career to researching and developing next-generation petroleum refining and petrochemical processes and catalysts.
Dr. Timken holds 154 US patents and has published 20 scientific journal articles. She holds a Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under Professor Eric Oldfield, and an MS and a BS degree in chemistry from Yonsei University, in Seoul, Korea.
Throughout her career, she has pursued learning the fundamentals of catalytic materials, then applied the knowledge to industrial catalytic processes to create higher value products, including cleaner fuels and base oils, high performing lubricant additives, petrochemical intermediates, and improved manufacturing processes. Her recent efforts include new technology R&D to support the energy transition toward the lower carbon future and reduced environmental impact, particularly for efficient carbon capture and plastics recycling.
For her work developing innovative catalysts for use in the groundbreaking ISOALKY™ Technology, Timken won the 2023 U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award for Chemistry in Service to Society, and in February of last year, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, which is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.
A project that spanned more than two decades of her career, Timken said she worked on the initial concept development and the process demonstration of the ISOALKY™ Technology and then formed a team of scientists and engineers. From there, Timken became a program manager and began the process design, which involved multiple scale-up phases and collaboration with external engineering companies, and a five-year pilot plant operation that helped fine tune the process and generate data that led to development of the commercial plant design.
The first commercial ISOALKY™ Alkylation Plant was launched in 2021. The technology can be used by hundreds of oil refineries worldwide to improve process safety and reduce environmental impacts of fuel production, and it has substantially decreased risks associated with gasoline production while providing more efficient conversion of petroleum to fuels.
When she was awarded the College of LAS Alumni Achievement Award in 2020, Timken said the new ISOALKY™ Technology is one of the accomplishments that makes her most proud.
At Illinois, she said her favorite class was Chemistry 407, Advanced Inorganic Chemistry, which she took as a first-year graduate student. It was an eye-opening class, she said, but in her second year, she decided to switch from the area of inorganic chemistry to physical chemistry, which required changing her Ph.D. advisor.
“That was a lot of initiative on my part and a pretty bold decision and that helped me into a new field, expand my horizons,” she said. “Whenever I have difficult decisions, I think about that first difficult decision in Illinois.”
Although this was a tough decision, it was also the most impactful, Timken said. It gave her confidence to expand into new areas and to not hesitate and speak up. She believes that these sorts of challenging decisions are also what help people grow into who they become.
“I think that life is not always monochromous. It is ups and downs, and the problems are difficult,” she said. “But then those give the best lessons. So, when you have a problem or issues, you are not alone… You are going to look back and (think), ‘By overcoming this problem I become a better person.’”