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ChemE spin-off transforms waste into energy
Scholarship recipients/donors honored
Antoine, Weaver receive Distinguished Service Awards
Thanks to our Visiting Committee
Regular Features
Faculty news
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Lenore M. Coberly, retired teacher, poet, and widow of Emeritus Professor Cam Coberly, has published The Handywoman Stories through Ohio University Press and Swallow Press. Drawn from her experiences growing up in Hamlin, West Virginia, the stories deal with economic depression, mine and war deaths, the arrogance of community leaders, and what might have been, but was not, a stultifying environment. As one reviewer (Lee Smith) wrote, "The Handywoman Stories are the real thing — deep, pure, honest and wise. Lenore Coberly's gift for narrative is a kind of genius. What a wonderful storyteller she is!" Congratulations, Lenore! |
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Nick Abbott, presented this year's Van Ness Award Lectures at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Department of Chemical Engineering on October 30 and 31. He spoke on "Active Control of Surfactants" and "Electrical Double Layers in Liquid Crystals." The award is presented annually to honor a chemical engineer who has made signal contributions to the profession. Nick has also received a grant of $425,000 from the Army to further develop his ideas for portable chemical sensors based on changes in orientation of liquid crystals in the presence of specific chemical species (see On These Foundations, Fall/Winter 2001-02).
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Juan de Pablo, Sean Palecek, and researchers in Pharmacy and the Medical School have received a $1.3 million, three-year contract from the Navy to combine molecular modeling with directed experiments to elucidate fundamental mechanisms of cell stabilization during cryopreservation (cold preservation) and lyophilization (freeze drying) of platelets and embryonic stem cells. They plan to identify where water and protectant molecules localize during cell freezing and drying, and determine how this localization affects cell viability. They will analyze damage to cells resulting from these processes and attempt to design novel methods for cryo-lyopreservation. Juan also recently received a grant of $191,000 from the National Science Foundation to study complex fluids for preservation of biological systems.
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Tom Kuech recently finished his term as president of the Association for American Crystal Growth and is beginning a term as an officer of the International Organization for Crystal Growth. Tom is serving as an international advisor to the Innovation and Technology Commission of Hong Kong determining their investment in nanoscience and technology. Tom also recently received a grant of $252,000 from the Navy to study the epitaxial integration of complex oxides and semiconductor materials to produce novel multifunctional electronic and photonic materials. He has also received a grant of $342,000 from the Army to study defect engineering in electronic materials through substrate design.
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Manos Mavrikakis and graduate student Jeff Greeley, together with Jens Nørskov of the Technical University of Denmark, have published a review article in Annual Reviews of Physical Chemistry (2002, Vol. 53: 319-348) covering important new computational tools available to researchers in the fields of surface science and catalysis. First principles studies provide an excellent fundamental complement to experimental investigations, and are now capable of providing qualitative and, in many cases, quantitative insights into surface chemistry, often allowing the elucidation of important mechanistic details that would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine from experiments alone.
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Paul Nealey and Juan de Pablo, along with faculty in the chemistry and electrical & computer engineering departments, have received a four-year, $1.25 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study the thermophysical properties, including transport and mechanical behavior, of polymeric materials in nanoscopic structures. The mass transport and glass transition behavior of polymeric materials can be significantly different in nanoscopic structures than in the bulk. The origin of these differences is not well understood and is a subject of considerable debate. Less is known about the mechanical properties of nanoscopic structures, although it is precisely these properties that pose the most immediate and significant challenges to the successful nanofabrication of integrated circuits, photonic devices, sensors, and nanoelectromechanical and nanobiotechnological systems. In addition, the group plans to develop an educational and outreach program to bring nanotechnology to pre-college students, teachers and the general public.
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Sean Palecek has received a grant of over $236,000 from the Whitaker Foundation for a proposal entitled, "Identification and Quantitative Analysis of Adhesion Mechanisms in Pathogenic Fungi." Because adhesion between fungus and host cells or medical implants has been identified as a virulence factor, Sean hopes to identify ways to reduce adhesion, and hence virulence, in two species of pathogenic fungi by discovering novel adhesion mechanisms and quantitatively characterizing how these mechanisms affect adhesion between fungi and host cells or implants.
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Thatcher Root and Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor Marc Anderson have received a grant of $140,000 from Wisconsin Focus on Energy to demonstrate the use of photocatalysis in an industrial setting for control of airborne volatile organic compounds (VOCs). A prototype titanium-based catalytic reactor will be installed at Northern Engraving to convert printing ink and solvent VOCs inside the 200,000 square foot facility to CO2 and H2O, controlling VOC emissions from the plant while reducing the energy needed for building ventilation and heating, and reducing or eliminating use of the existing thermal oxidizing system.
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Eric Shusta has received a grant of $300,000 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to develop an in vitro model of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Ethanol appears to increase infiltration through the BBB by HIV infected monocytes or free HIV virus, exacerbating symptoms of HIV encephalitis and AIDS dementia. By studying differential gene expression profiles between intact brain microvessels and primary cultures of brain microvessel endothelial cells, Eric plans to create a gene microarray to use for the quantitative assessment of an in vitro model's ability to reestablish in vivo conditions. Using special co-culture techniques to reestablish molecular pathways and physiological characteristics in the cell culture, he will fine-tune the in vitro model to match the gene expression observed in vivo. Finally, Eric will look at the effects of ethanol on the functional features of the in vitro model as a preliminary validation of in vitro models for the study of the complicated interactions between HIV, ethanol and the BBB.