Brennecke was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2012 for innovation in the use of ionic liquids and supercritical fluids for environmentally benign chemical processing.
[2] During her final year of school a director at the nearby DuPont plant read about her achievements in the local newspaper and offered her a sponsored position at the University of Texas at Austin.
[1] She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984, spending alternate semesters at DuPont research facilities.
[1] She moved to the University of Notre Dame in 1989, where she started her independent academic career, studying how solutes in supercritical fluids could be used to control reaction rates.
[4] Brennecke has proposed that these ionic liquids can be used to develop environmentally friendly processes, as they will not contribute to air pollution.