Faculty news

Nicholas L. Abbott (26K JPG)

Nick Abbott's research on wearable chemical sensors received notice in the February 2002 issue of Popular Science. By using liquid crystals in combination with nanostructured surfaces, Nick has created optical amplifiers that can be used for rapid detection of a variety of chemicals and pathogens. (See also the Fall/Winter 2001-02 issue of On These Foundations for more on Abbott's work.) Together with Barbara Israel, senior scientist at the UW School of Veterinary Medicine and Christopher Murphy, professor of veterinary medicine, Nick has started a new company, Platypus Technologies, to commercialize the devices. Platypus has received a $250,000 technology development loan from the state and $2.9 million from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and private investors.

James A. Dumesic (29K JPG)

The 2002 College of Engineering Byron Bird Award for Excellence in a Research Publication was presented to Jim Dumesic based on his publications related to the microkinetics of catalytic reactions. The main results of this work are presented in a tutorial way in Jim's book, The Microkinetics of Heterogeneous Catalysis, coauthored with emeritus professor Dale Rudd, Luis Aparicio (PhD '87), and James Rekoske (BS 1988, MS '91).

The importance of this text is elegantly captured by Michel Boudart, a world-leader in catalysis over the second half of the 20th century, in the introductory sentence of his foreword to Jim's book, "From Michaelis-Menten to Langmuir-Hinshelwood to Hougen-Watson to Dumesic-Rudd: a progression in catalytic kinetics, from enzymes to design. But the last step is a big step because it reverses the rules of the game."

Tom Kuech was the winner of the Byron Bird Award in 2000 for his work on metalorganic chemical vapor deposition.

Michael D. Graham (25K JPG)

Mike Graham was named a 2002-2004 Vilas Associate in the Physical Sciences by the Graduate School. This award provides summer salary and a research grant in recognition of outstanding research by recently tenured faculty.

Mike is spending the summer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, participating in the Institute for Theoretical Physics' program in the dynamics of complex and macromolecular fluids and collaborating with G.M. Homsy of the mechanical and chemical engineering departments on research in polymer fluid dynamics.

Manos Mavrikakis (15K JPG)

Manos Mavrikakis was awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation for his proposal, "Catalyst Design for Environmentally Friendlier Energy Production: A Concerted First-Principles and Combinatorial Methods Approach." The CAREER program recognizes and supports the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century. The award is for five years and brings $375,000 from NSF.

Manos' work also was highlighted in the recent annual report of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), one of the nation's most powerful unclassified computing resources serving about 2,000 researchers at national laboratories, universities, and industries across the country.

Using powerful computers locally and nationally, Manos' group seeks to model the thermochemistry of reactions, atomic and molecular diffusion barriers, and activation energy barriers for chemical reactions, and uses trends and discontinuities characterizing the behavior of metals to guide the design of new catalysts.

Finally, Manos was selected to receive a 3M Nontenured Faculty Award. Writing for the 3M Corporation, Mark Debe wrote to Manos that, "Fundamental work on catalyst surface reactivities for fuel cells, both as electrode catalysts and reformer catalysts, will be important for this new technology to develop as a mainstream renewable power generation source of tomorrow. Our catalyst team in the 3M fuel cell components program is very interested and impressed by the depth and relevance of your work in this area."

Regina M. Murphy (29K JPG)

Based on her substantial accomplishments in teaching, research and service, and on the recommendation of the department's full professors, the dean of engineering has promoted Regina Murphy from associate to full professor. Regina holds the recently endowed Harvey D. Spangler Chair in Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Thatcher W. Root (38K JPG)

Thatcher Root was selected by a vote of undergraduate students to receive an annual teaching excellence award from the Polygon Engineering Council, the engineering college council of student organizations. Thatcher taught CBE 250: Process Synthesis in recent semesters. Mariam Gonzalez, a PhD student in Tom Kuech's group, received the Polygon Engineering Council award for best TA in chemical engineering for her work in CBE 320: Introductory Transport Phenomena.