Department news

Summer Lab goes wireless

Each of the last two summers we have provided laptop PCs with wireless networking to students in CBE 424: Operations and Process Laboratory (the infamous Summer Lab). Students used them in the laboratory to enter and analyze data, share files with group members, and have online access to the library and other information resources. This improved computer access produced better experiments and reports. It also reduced stress levels for students, who found that their wireless access let them work on lab reports at Memorial Union!

Thatcher Root initiated the effort with computers supplied by the College of Engineering Computer Aided Engineering Center as part of a study of wireless network access on the engineering campus. Thatcher plans to make wireless networking a regular feature of the course.

Life Sciences added to the curriculum

Chemical engineering is a discipline with a unique focus on molecular transformations. Increasingly, many of these transformations are being engineered to take place in biological systems, with the result that the life sciences have become enabling sciences for the discipline. This trend will likely continue, representing a permanent change in the scope of our field.

To better prepare our engineering undergraduates for the challenges this change entails, the faculty recently added two courses to the requirements for the undergraduate degree in chemical engineering:

• Introduction to Biochemistry, covers topics at the molecular length scale in sufficient detail to allow our undergraduates to assimilate engineering problems with origins and applications in biology
• Cell Biology, provides knowledge of the context of biochemical reactions within the cell.