Selim Senkan, PhD

Scientific advisor

Professor Senkan has made significant industrial contributions to boron chemistry and boron-based superhard materials. He is affiliated with the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles and is a leading innovator in advanced materials synthesis, including cubic boron nitride (c-BN). He has authored over 190 scientific publications and holds more than 80 patents/applications developed in collaboration with global companies such as BP, Sumitomo, Dow, and BASF in the areas of catalytic materials and high-throughput screening.

His work bridges fundamental research and industrial-scale commercialization. Prior to UCLA, he served on the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he contributed to the development of large-scale production processes for high-purity hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), a key precursor to c-BN, in collaboration with Kennecott Copper (now part of Rio Tinto).

He is the co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of SB Boron Corporation (Chicago, Illinois, USA), where he developed and industrialized the core production technology for high-purity amorphous boron powder (ABP). SB Boron has been a global leader in the ABP business since its inception. He is also the co-founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of Laboratory Catalyst Systems LLC (Los Angeles, California, USA), a pioneer in robotic and miniaturized catalyst performance evaluation systems used by major chemical and petrochemical companies worldwide.