John Yin

In spring 2003, John Yin was selected as the inaugural Olaf A. Hougen Scholar based on his proposal to develop biologically oriented instructional examples and problems for integration into the chemical and biological engineering curriculum. The examples and worked problems sought to introduce principles and concepts of biology while conveying or illustrating important chemical engineering principles. This proposal was motivated by a number of recent changes to chemical engineering: there is a growing demand for ChE undergraduates who have training in the biological sciences, many ChE departments around the country are requiring undergraduate coursework in biology at the molecular and/or cellular levels, and traditional ChE departments are increasingly changing their names to reflect research and instructional activities in both chemical and biological engineering.

The problems were developed for use by ChE instructors who have little or no background in biology. A major challenge for such instructors is to cut through the language barrier that separates them from interesting chemical engineering problems lurking in biological systems. The problems, which span principles of kinetics, thermodynamics, transport phenomena, and systems, are accompanied by solutions as well as notes for the instructor that indicate the key concepts or relevant chapters from established ChE textbooks. The problems are intended for adoption in standard ChE courses and are currently being tested and refined in the department's undergraduate courses. John plans to make the problems and solutions accessible via the web by this summer.