[citation needed] In 2011, Banks received the Perkin Medal for his work from the American section of the Society of Chemical Industry, the highest award for applied chemistry in the United States.

In 1980, he received his Ph.D. in inorganic/physical chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for Nobel laureate and fellow Perkin medal winner Glenn Seaborg on the synthesis and characterization of volatile actinide compounds.

[2] Banks moved to the Chicago area in 1980, working briefly as a post-doctoral student at Argonne National Laboratory on x-ray photoemission spectroscopy properties of neptunium oxides before joining Nalco Chemical Company as a research scientist.

The 3D TRASAR version of this technology won a United States Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for its cooling water application in 2008.

[3] Banks has created various electrochemical, optical, quartz crystal microbalance-based sensors to measure chemical treatment levels, corrosion, scale and microbial fouling.