A special guest was in the audience when students in Dr. Victor Ugaz’s special topics elective course “Introduction to Microfabrication and Microfluidics” delivered their term project presentations on December 7. Sonia Azad, news anchor and producer at local television station KRHD was on hand to serve as a celebrity judge for the assignment which challenged students to communicate the main concepts and significance of a topic dealing with miniaturized chemical analysis systems in a way that could be understandable to a general audience, all within a 15-20 minute time limit. Sonia commented that she was very impressed with the students’ overall knowledge and presentation skills, and that she was able to take away new knowledge about chemical engineering from their presentations.

For the 2005-2006 Academic Year, Shell Oil provided funds to recognize our outstanding graduate students. These funds assist the department in recruiting and retaining top students by rewarding students for hard work and excellence. We have utilized these funds to support fellowships for the students listed below.

Shamik Bhattacharya
Viet Pham
Brandon Shaw
Sk-Ali Ashfaque
Selma Atilhan
Susanna Wong
Michael Wang
Lisa Veltman
Divya Narayanan
Lay Myint
Jonathan Lunn
Allyson Laible
Ronnie Hassanen
Benjamin Cormier
Ali Abedi
Arwa Rabie

The following graduating seniors received awards in Fall 2005 from the department:

Outstanding Graduating Senior: Amber Smades
Chemical Engineering Excellence Senior Award: Christine Phan, Jacob Kasper, Marcos Rosales

Dr. Thomas Wood, who joined our faculty this fall as the inaugural holder of the Mike O’Connor Chair II in Chemical Engineering, comes from a faculty position from the University of Connecticut where he held the Northeast Utilities Endowed Chair in Environmental Engineering Education. His research areas are in biomedical and biomolecular as well as environmental engineering.

Since his arrival, he has been successful in obtaining the following new grants: three NIH, one NSF, one DARPA, and one US Army Research Office.

To read more on this story, click here.
Courtesy of Texas A&M Engineering News

The department has executed an agreement with the Universidad Industrial de Santander (UIS) in Bucaramanga, COLOMBIA that includes student and faculty exchanges as well as research cooperation. This project has had a very successful launching during the past semester.

During the fall of 2005, we hosted eight undergraduate interns and one graduate intern from UIS. In addition, we have one graduate student here for the PhD program with three more due to arrive in March 2006.

Professors Balbuena, Ford, Hall and Seminario visited UIS in January 2006 to become acquainted with UIS faculty. Hopefully, these interactions can lead to joint research projects. Both departments are delighted with the joint agreement, and we anticipate a long and fruitful relationship.

Kristen Gantt received a second place award in the undergraduate student poster competition at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) national meeting in Cincinnati, OH, held on October 30 - November 4, 2005. Her poster was titled “Investigation of Novel Convective Flow PCR”, and was one of over 100 posters presented by chemical engineering students from across the nation.

The Chemical Engineering Department and the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center have established the Lamiya Memorial Safety Scholarship. On October 13, 2005, all graduate students were informed of this newly created scholarship and, at the same time, encouraged them to apply for the opportunity to be awarded a $1,000 scholarship. The criteria for the 2005 award was writing a 1000-word essay on “Safety Innovations In Research Projects?” to be turned in within a week’s time to Dr. Mannan.

The winner of the first Lamiya Memorial Safety Scholarship was Arnab Chakrabarty for his paper entitled “Safety Innovations in Research Projects”. The scholarship and plaque were presented to him during the morning general session of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center International Symposium on October 26, 2005.

The plant design project competition for the Fall Semester of 2005 was sponsored by Celanese Corporation with the judging leaders being Wayne Picard (Clear Lake) and Ron Olsson (Bishop). Additionally, Myron Goforth of Dew Point Control participated in the judging.

The project for this class was to select a process and to perform the conceptual design to treat a sweet natural gas to maximize the return based on current energy prices. Earlier in the semester each group had performed a full conceptual process design of their process and had submitted a report that encompassed the material balances, the process flow diagram drawings, safety and environmental documentation, and economic analysis. The design competition was based on a presentation of further analyses and optimization of the process that they had selected using simulation and integration tools that were not used in the first project.

The winning groups (and their members, left to right in the photos) are as follows:

	1st place: Efficiency Engineering (David Kohtz, Amber Smades, Ron Olsson, Daniel McClellan, Marcos Rosales)
	2nd place: KC and the Munshine Band (Christine Phan, Joseph Munn, Ron Olsson, Kasey Johnston, Robert Hahn)
	3rd place: The Misfits (Frederick Woods, Shara Boquiren, Ron Olsson, Bridget Padden [front], Melvin Dubois [rear], Stephen Damaske)

Honorably mentioned were the following groups:
Bare Minimum Engineering (Matthew Carr, Patrick Conroy, John Marshall, Nicholas Maida)
Fantastic Four (Thomas Elsom, Ashley Hurley, Michael Karlin, Aaron Lack)

In October, two junior chemical engineering students, Kristen Gantt and Derek Moser, received GPA scholarships. Each of these GPA scholarships is in the amount of $2,800.

In addition to the Outstanding Senior award from the department, Amber Smades was among six other Texas A&M University engineering students honored on October 14, 2005, with the Craig C. Brown Outstanding Senior Engineer Award. This award is the most prestigious honor bestowed on a graduating senior in the Dwight Look College of Engineering and is given annually based on students’ outstanding scholastic achievement, leadership and character.

To read more about Amber and her achievements, click here.
Courtesy of Texas A&M Engineering News