COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Nov. 20, 2009 – Qingqing Wang, a graduate student in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been awarded an Eastman Chemical Engineering Graduate Fellowship from the Eastman Chemical Group.

Wang was selected for the honor based on her excellence and scholastic achievement. The fellowship will provide her with $5,000 for her research.

Wang, a fourth-year graduate student, is conducting research that focuses on developing new materials that catalyze chemical reactions. One reaction of interest that she has investigated is the formation of biodiesel from triglycerides.

“I am very pleased that Qingqing’s research has been recognized with this award,” said Associate Professor Daniel Shantz, who serves as Wang’s adviser. “Her scientific contributions in silica-supported organocatalysts have been well received by the academic community, and I look forward to more great things from her.”

Eastman fellowships are awarded to promote enrichment, growth and development in students involved in engineering.

Eastman is a Fortune 500 company that manufactures and markets more than 1,200 products that enhance the lives of people around the world. The company provides key differentiated coatings, adhesives, specialty plastics products and is a major supplier of cellulose acetate fibers.

COLLEGE STATION, Nov. 20, 2009 – Hae-Kwon Jeong, assistant professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been named an “Outstanding Young Investigator” by the Korean Institute of Chemical Engineers (KIChE).

The award recognizes outstanding research by a tenure-track Korean faculty member who shows exceptional promise as a developing leader in chemical engineering. The award recipient must be appointed at a Tier One college or university in United States.

Jeong’s research focuses on the development of novel methodologies to design, modify, deposit and microfabricate nanostructured materials. He also works to build them into hierarchical structures and complex forms for wide ranges of applications including separation membranes, selective catalysts, adsorbents as well as micro systems, fuel cells, bio-separation and microphotonics.

Prior to joining Texas A&M, Jeong received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He completed his undergraduate career at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea.

As an honoree, Jeong was formally recognized and presented a monetary stipend at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

KIChE was founded in 1962 as a scientific, engineering and professional organization dedicated to the advancement of the theory and application of chemical engineering technology. Today, KIChE has more than 5,000 members, nine regional sections and 13 technical divisions.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Nov. 12, 2009 – Victor Carreto-Vazquez, a graduate student in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been selected as the recipient of the 2009 Lamiya Zahin Memorial Safety Scholarship.

Carreto-Vazquez, who is conducting his graduate studies under the auspices of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center (MKOPSC), received the scholarship for his essay “Expanding MKOPSC Dust Explosion Research Capabilities by including MIE and Electrostatics Charge Accumulation/Discharge Research.” He was presented the scholarship at the center’s annual international symposium.

The scholarship was established by MKOPSC and the department of chemical engineering to honor the memory of Lamiya Zahin, the daughter of chemical engineering graduate student Saquib Ejaz. Zahin died from injuries sustained in an explosion and fire in a university apartment on the Texas A&M campus in 2004. Ejaz’s mother also died from injuries sustained in the accident.

Each year Texas A&M graduate students are encouraged to apply for the scholarship by writing an essay on “Safety Innovations in Research Projects.”

COLLEGE STATION, Nov. 9, 2009 – Mark Deimund, a senior in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, has been nominated for the Marshall Scholarship, one of the two most prestigious and highly coveted academic scholarships available to United States students.

Deimund, class of 2010, is from Oklahoma City. The president of Texas A&M University’s American Institute of Chemical Engineers chapter, his recent research on biomass processing has garnered him a patent, and his current research involves systems biology in liver cells. He also is an avid strength trainer and enjoys classical literature. If selected as a Marshall Scholar, Deimund said he will study advanced chemical engineering at Cambridge University. He said he will also apply for the Winston Churchill Foundation Scholarship and the Gates-Cambridge Scholarship.

Deimund was recently named a 2009 recipient of the Craig C. Brown Outstanding Senior Award from the Dwight Look College of Engineering.

The Marshall Scholarship is tenable for two years of study at any university in the United Kingdom. Students must be graduating seniors or recent graduates and be nominated by the university. Hundreds of students from across the United States apply each year; only 40 of the approximately 1,100 who applied for the Marshall Scholarship in 2008 were selected as scholars.

Nominees will hear of their selection as finalists in the next one to two weeks. Finalists will then participate in regional or district interviews in Houston in November. The announcement of scholars will be announced shortly thereafter.

Texas A&M University has produced four Marshall Scholars, the most recent being Faye Hays in 2007. In the 2009 competition, biochemistry major Matthew Hickey was a finalist for the Marshall.

The Marshall Scholarships began in 1953 as a gesture of thanks from the British Government for U.S. assistance in rebuilding Europe after World War II. Former Marshall Scholars include Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist Thomas Friedman. According to the Marshall Scholarship Foundation, as future leaders, Marshall Scholars are “expected to strengthen the enduring relationship between the British and American peoples, their governments and their institutions. Marshall Scholars are talented, independent and wide-ranging, and their time as scholars enhances their intellectual and personal growth. Their direct engagement with Britain through its best academic programms contributes to their ultimate personal success.”

Because of the fierce competition for these scholarships, the preliminary process to be selected as an official university nominee is quite rigorous. Currently enrolled students and recent graduates should apply for selection in April, with the official deadline for the scholarships being in early October. To be awarded the university’s nomination, a student must show strong scholarly potential, demonstrated through their academic record and letters of recommendation from faculty, leadership ability, demonstrated through their involvement in student and civic organizations, and excellent speaking and analytical skills, as demonstrated in a series of interviews.

Once approved, prospective nominees can expect to spend months developing their applications as they work closely under the advice and guidance of faculty and academic advisors. The official announcement of university endorsement is made only after the nominees submit their finalized application to the scholarship foundations.

For more information, contact Kyle Mox, national scholarships coordinator in the Honors Programs office, at (979)845-1957 or kemox@tamu.edu.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Nov. 6, 2009 – Mahmoud El-Halwagi, professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been named recipient of the 2009 Research Excellence in Sustainable Engineering Award.

The prestigious award is presented by the Sustainable Engineering Forum (SEF) of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and recognizes basic or applied research results relative to the sustainability of products, processes or the environment. It is annually bestowed upon a researcher who has made significant technical contributions to the advancement of sustainable engineering in research, teaching and development activities.

Holder of the McFerrin Professorship, El-Halwagi is internationally known for his pioneering contributions in the fields of sustainable design and process integration, and he has written two widely used texts on the subject. At Texas A&M, he teaches senior-level undergraduate and graduate classes, covering the areas of sustainability, process design, simulation, economics, integration and optimization.

The SEF seeks collaborative work in programming and education objectives with other professional societies, both national and foreign. Specific focus areas of the forum include using appropriate metrics for sustainability; developing approaches for designing products and processes that can be optimized to desired metrics criteria and that incorporate environmental and societal benefit factors; and assessing impacts of resource use on environmental and social benefits of products, processes and services.

Other focus areas include designing new processes or products that are comparatively benign; responding to socioeconomic measures such as emission trading; and developing educational materials related to the field.

El-Halwagi will receive the award at an awards ceremony taking place during the 2009 AIChE Annual Meeting in Nashville.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Nov. 5, 2009 – Understanding how certain pathogenic bacteria strains such as E. coli cause infection in people begins with unraveling the complex “talk” between the trillions of cells living in the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract, says Arul Jayaraman, a Texas A&M University researcher who has developed an artificial system that mimics the unique bacteria-laden environment of the human GI tract.

The system is detailed this month in “Lab on a Chip,” a scientific journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry – the largest organization in Europe for advancing the chemical sciences.

It represents a significant step in understanding bacterial interactions in the GI tract because it accurately simulates conditions within that area by enabling human epithelial cells to grow in balance with the naturally occurring bacteria (termed “commensal”) that reside in the GI tract.

Traditionally, growing both types of these cells simultaneously in a laboratory environment has been difficult because bacteria reproduce at a much faster rate than epithelial cells and tend to monopolize the nutrients needed by the epithelial cells, says Jayaraman, assistant professor in Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

“If you try to achieve this in a cell-culture dish what happens is that you have a very nutrient-rich environment that bacteria basically thrive in, dividing rapidly,” Jayaraman says. “You can start with the same number of cells, relatively in proportion, but the bacteria will keep dividing, taking up all of the nutrients. Epithelial cells then do not get what they need. They are typically more finicky than bacterial cells. The numbers then kick in, and it is an exponential process where you will soon have millions of bacteria outnumbering epithelial cells, which will soon die.”

That doesn’t happen in Jayaraman’s model, which grows the epithelial and commensal cell colonies separately before allowing them to interact as they would in the gut. Once the two types of cells are interacting in the right balance, Jayaraman can recreate the sequence of events in a GI tract infection by introducing a foreign pathogen – in this case, Enterohemorrhagic E. coli – to the cells within his model.

Previous studies have just added pathogenic bacteria into colonies of endothelial cells, but this approach does not replicate the cellular interactions and chemical signals present in the human GI tract, Jayaraman notes.

“If you really want to understand how the commensal bacteria that are in the GI tract either prevent or enhance infection, you need to have a way in which you can actually recreate the system with both components present – the commensal cells and the epithelial cells,” Jayaraman says. “To our knowledge, this is the first report describing co-culture of bacteria and epithelial cells and its application to investigate pathogen colonization and infection.”

Commensal bacteria, he explains, produce a wide range of bacterial signals, and the concentration of these signals in the GI tract is extremely high.

These signals, he adds, are given off during normal metabolic processes of the cells. While there is no evidence to suggest that they were created specifically for defensive purposes, some of these signals have evolved to act as a line of defense. Others may actually enhance a pathogen’s infectious potential, he says. For the invading pathogen, it’s a matter of “talking” to the right cells and avoiding the “wrong” ones.

It’s a game of “push and pull” that is further complicated by the fact that the strength of these signal levels varies, Jayaraman says. For example, a person may be under a lot of stress, which can cause stress hormones to be high and might in turn diminish the signals that aid in defense against a pathogen. Other times, a gastric disease might kill some of these cells that are emitting a protective signal, lowering the overall strength of the signal and making a person more susceptible to serious infection, Jayaraman notes.

So far, Jayaraman’s model has yielded some interesting findings, shedding light on the constant array of signals being emitted within the GI tract and their effects on invading pathogens. One of those findings reveals how indole, a chemical produced by commensal cells within the GI tract, acts a signal to foreign pathogens.

“Indole already has been shown as an important signal for communication between bacteria,” Jayaraman says. “We are looking at how pathogens might also be affected by indole, and we are seeing that they are indeed affected.”

Specifically, if a pathogen passes through bacteria that produce indole, the pathogen will become less infectious, Jayaraman explains. Conversely, if it passes through bacteria where there is no indole, the pathogen retains it same degree of virulence.

“In a sense, the pathogen is looking for weak points in a ‘wall’ of defense,” Jayaraman says. “We believe this can be applied to several other signals. There might be signals that increase a pathogen’s infectiousness. Does it choose a location in the wall where it can pass through without decreasing its infectious potential, or does it look for a place where its infectiousness is enhanced?”

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Contact: Arul Jayaraman at (979) 845-3306 or via email at: arulj@tamu.edu or Ryan A. Garcia at (979) 845-9237 or via email at: ryan.garcia99@tamu.edu.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Nov. 2, 2009 – M. Sam Mannan, director of the Texas A&M University System Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center, will deliver a keynote address at the 38th Annual Iowa Governor’s Safety and Health Conference in Cedar Rapids.

Mannan, who also holds the title of regents professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M, is scheduled to present “Making the right Decision: What we Learn From History” at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4 at the Cedar Rapids Marriott Hotel.

This year’s conference theme is “Safety at Risk: Choice and Influence.”

Mannan, a professional engineer and certified safety professional, is an internationally recognized expert on process safety and risk assessment. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and a member of the American Society of Safety Engineers, International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration and National Fire Protection Association. In addition to his many professional honors and achievements, Mannan has served as a consultant to numerous entities in both the academic and private sectors, including the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

In addition to Mannan’s address, the conference also will feature keynote presentations from John S. Bresland, chairman/ chief executive officer of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, and John Henshaw, former assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

COLLEGE STATION, Nov. 2, 2009 – Mark Deimund, a senior in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been named one of five student recipients of the 2009-2010 Craig C. Brown Outstanding Senior Engineer Award.

The award is considered the most prestigious honor bestowed on a graduating senior in the university’s Dwight Look College of Engineering and is presented to a student who demonstrates scholastic achievement, leadership skills and a strong moral character. Recipients must have a 3.5 minimum overall GPR, participate in numerous university organizations and posses such qualities as loyalty, honor, duty and integrity.

Deimund is a chemical engineering major from Oklahoma City, Okla. Cited by one professor as among his top 10 undergraduates in the last quarter-century, Deimund is a member of four honor societies: Tau Beta Pi, Omega Chi Epsilon, Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Eta Sigma. His current term as president caps three years of leadership roles in the Texas A&M chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

He has been a Chem-E Car team leader since 2007, guiding his group to multiple wins at regional and national competitions. He has worked summers for Celanese Chemicals as an R&D intern in Texas and a process engineering intern in Virginia. His volunteer work has included Texas A&M Big Event, Habitat for Humanity and Super Summer Southern Baptist Youth Leadership Camp.

Deimund has assisted with Texas A&M research on a biomass processing technique that is being patented and published. He visited 15 states during travels this past summer while earning his business management certificate for engineers. He is scheduled to graduate in May 2010.

In addition to Deimund, seniors Colin Bailie, Alexandra (Sandra) Iacob, Rachel Oyler and Rodrigo Garza Urquiza received the annual award. Each of the seniors received an engraved medallion and a $5,000 educational grant. Their names appear on a plaque in the Zachry Engineering Center.

Formerly known as the Engineering Faculty Senior Award, the award was renamed in 1996 to honor Craig C. Brown for his vision to expand and enhance the recognition program through a permanent endowment. Brown is a 1975 civil engineering graduate and past recipient of the award. He is currently president, owner and chief operating officer of Bray International Inc. and president and chairman of the board of the Craig C. Brown Foundation.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Oct. 21, 2009 – Victor Carreto-Vazquez, a graduate student of the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering working under the auspices of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University, has been recognized as part of a team awarded the Journey Champion distinction by BASF-The Chemical Company.

Carreto-Vazquez, who interned at BASF, was part of a vinsol resin team that assisted seven of the corporation’s facilities in achieving safer operations by identifying flammable dust used at the facilities and helping facilitate transition to a less-flammable variation of the product. Carreto-Vazquez internship was in BASF’s Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering division in Wyandotte, Mich.

The honor, which is bestowed by BASF’s senior vice president of ecology and safety, recognizes employees, leaders and teams who have distinguished themselves through their outstanding work while at BASF.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Oct. 21, 2009 – Authorities on safety from throughout the world will convene in College Station next week as part of a two-day symposium aimed at making the process industry a safer place and sponsored by the Texas A&M University System Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center.

The symposium “Beyond Regulatory Compliance, Making Safety Second Nature” is scheduled for Oct. 27-28 at the Hilton Conference Center and will feature wide variety of safety-related lectures and presentations, including process safety challenges in a hydrogen economy; effective process safety auditing techniques; technical analysis of the Buncefield explosion; and various topics pertaining to liquefied natural gas.

In addition, the symposium will feature exhibits from companies looking to demonstrate products, technology and software related to process safety.

“This symposium serves as the crossroads for process safety where industry, academia, government agencies and other stakeholders come together to discuss critical issues of research in process safety,” said M. Sam Mannan, director of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center. “I firmly believe that we are making major strides towards our goal of making safety second nature,” added Mannan, who also holds the title of Regents Professor in Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Andrew Hopkins, professor of sociology at the Australian National University, headlines a distinguished list of presenters speaking throughout the two-day span and will deliver the annual Frank P. Lees Memorial Lecture. Hopkins is scheduled to present “Why BP Failed to Learn the Lessons: The Texas City Refinery Explosion” at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27.

Hopkins, who served as an expert witness at the Royal Commission, which investigated the causes of the fire at Esso’s gas plant at Longford in Victoria in 1998, has written several books focusing on the organizational and cultural causes of major accidents.

In 2001 he was the expert member of the board of inquiry into the exposure of Air Force maintenance workers to toxic chemicals. He has been involved in various government occupational health and safety reviews and has consulted with major companies in the resources sector.

In addition, Hopkins served as a consultant to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board in its investigation of the Texas City accident and has published a book on that accident, “Failure to Learn: the BP Texas City Refinery Disaster.”

Hopkins has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the Australian National University, a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut and is a Fellow of the Safety Institute of Australia.

Established in 1995, the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center is dedicated to enhancing safety in the chemical process industry. The center conducts various educational endeavors aimed at “making safety second nature” to everyone in the industry. In addition, center researchers work to develop safer processes, equipment, procedures and management strategies to minimize losses.

For more information about the symposium, including a full schedule, visit http://psc.tamu.edu/ and click on “2009 Symposium,” or contact Donna Startz at (979) 845-5981 or via email: donnas@tamu.edu.