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.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Oct. 14, 2009 – Abraham Stroock, associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University, will discuss his research Wednesday, Oct. 21, as part of the 2009 J.D. Lindsay Lecture Series at Texas A&M University.

Stroock’s presentation, “Microvascular Structure and Function in vitro,” is scheduled from 3-4 p.m. in Rm. 106 of the Jack E. Brown Building. His presentation is sponsored by Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Vascular structure – a network of convective paths – is a ubiquitous element in multicellular, living systems, Stroock says. The key function of vascular structure in animals and plants is mediation of convective mass transfer over macroscopic distances. This transfer allows an organism to monitor and control the chemical state of its tissues, he explains.

In Stroock’s laboratory, his research group is developing methods to embed and operate microfluidic systems within tissue-like materials in order to capture this function for both biological and non-biological applications. His presentation will detail examples of his efforts, including his experiments with “synthetic trees” in which he has reproduced the main features of transpiration.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in physics at Cornell, Stroock spent two years in France where he worked in the research division of Electricite de France and completed a master’s degree at the University of Paris VI and XI in solid state physics. Upon returning to the United States, he earned his doctoral degree at Harvard University and in 2003 joined Cornell as an assistant professor.

He is the recipient of the Henry and Camille Dreyfus New faculty award, the North American Mixing Forum Start-Up Award, the Office of Naval Research’s Young Investigator award, the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, the Beckman Foundation Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. In addition, he has been named to MIT Technology Review’s TR35 list of top innovators under 35.

In honor of Professor J.D. Lindsay, Texas A&M’s first chemical engineering department head, the department established the Lindsay Lecture Series to bring speakers to the university. Coming from both industry and academia, the lecturers are recognized for their accomplishments in the practice, teaching and/or research of chemical engineering. The series also allows the lecturers several days for visiting the university and the department and for exchanging ideas on teaching and research objectives and methods.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Oct. 19, 2009 – Costas D. Maranas, professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, will discuss his research Wednesday, Oct. 28, as part of the 2009 J.D. Lindsay Lecture Series at Texas A&M University.

Maranas’ presentation, “Using Computations to Reconstruct, Analyze and Redesign Metabolism,” is scheduled from 3-4 p.m. in Rm. 106 of the Jack E. Brown Building. His presentation is sponsored by Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Maranas will discuss speeding up the process of building organism-specific metabolic models by automatically filling in connectivity gaps and restoring consistency with gene essentiality experiments. His presentation will highlight ongoing genome-scale reconstruction efforts in his research group and explore how computations can help elucidate metabolic flows using isotope labeling experiments. The latest optimization based techniques will also be described for strain optimization leading to the microbial overproduction of targeted compounds including chemicals identified as promising biofuels.

The Donald B. Broughton Professor at Penn State, Maranas’ research interests include computational protein design; reconstruction, curation and analysis of metabolic networks; microbial strain optimization; design of biological circuits and synthetic biology; signaling networks and multi-scale modeling in cancer biology, network science, optimization theory and algorithms.

Maranas earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1990 at Aristotle University in Greece. He then received his master’s degree in chemical engineering in 1992 at Princeton University before earning his Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 1995 from Princeton.

He is the recipient of the Allan P. Colburn Award for Excellence in Publication and a member of the editorial boards for “Biophysical Journal, Computers & Chemical Engineering” and “Metabolic Engineering.” He also is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Energy.

In honor of Professor J.D. Lindsay, Texas A&M’s first chemical engineering department head, the department established the Lindsay Lecture Series to bring speakers to the university. Coming from both industry and academia, the lecturers are recognized for their accomplishments in the practice, teaching and/or research of chemical engineering. The series also allows the lecturers several days for visiting the university and the department and for exchanging ideas on teaching and research objectives and methods.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Oct. 8, 2009 – Greg Stephanopoulos, H.D. Dow Professor of Biotechnology and Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will discuss his research Wednesday and Thursday (Oct. 14-15) as the invited speaker for the 2009 McFerrin Lectures at Texas A&M University.

Stephanopoulos is scheduled to present “Biofuels and Metabolic Engineering,” Wednesday at 3 p.m. in Rm. 106 of the Jack E. Brown Building. The following day he will present “Transcriptional, Metabolomic and Flux Data: What Are They Good For?” at 11 a.m. in Rm. 256.

Stephanopoulos is the second visiting lecturer to have the McFerrin title bestowed upon him. His presentations are sponsored by Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering. Last year, Babatunde A. Ogunnaike of the University of Delaware delivered the inaugural lecture.

Stephanopoulos’ research interests span a broad spectrum of biotechnological applications, including the cultivation and physiology of mammalian cells (in particular, investigation of cell death in sustained cell culture, glycosylation and regulated secretion); metabolic engineering and its applications to the production of amino acids and biochemicals; and bioinformatics and functional genomics whereby new genomics-based technologies are applied to the elucidation of cell physiology and metabolic engineering.

His work has appeared in more than 300 publications and resulted in 25 patents. He presently serves on the editorial boards of seven scientific journals and on the advisory boards of five chemical engineering departments. He also is the editor-in-chief of “Metabolic Engineering.”

Dr. Stephanopoulos has been recognized with the Dreyfus Foundation Teacher Scholar Award, the Excellence in Teaching Award and the Technical Achievement Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He has been a Presidential Young Investigator and Chairman of the AIChE Food Pharmaceutical & Bioengineering Division.

His numerous honors and distinctions include the FPBE Division Award at AIChE, the Marvin J. Johnson Award of the American Chemical Society, and the AIChE Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering. In 2002 Dr. Stephanopoulos was elected to the AIChE Board of Directors, and in 2003 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Stephanopoulos also is a recipient of the C. Thom Award from SIM, the AIChE Founders Award, the Amgen Award in Biochemical Engineering and ACS Murphree Award.

Named in honor of Arthur R. “Artie” McFerrin, Jr., a 1965 graduate of Texas A&M and an avid supporter of both the department and university, the McFerrin Lectures were established in 2008 to enable prominent chemical engineering researchers from throughout the world to visit Texas A&M and interact with students and faculty through lectures on their given areas of expertise.

The McFerrin Lectures are made possible by the generosity of McFerrin, who serves as chairman and CEO of KMCO, Inc. and in 2005 committed $10 million to establish an endowed fund in support of chemical engineering at Texas A&M.

McFerrin is an Outstanding Alumnus of the chemical engineering department and a recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award – the highest honor bestowed upon a former student of the institution.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Sept. 28, 2009 – Orlin D. Velev, INVISTA professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University, will discuss his research Wednesday, Oct. 7, as part of the 2009 J.D. Lindsay Lecture Series at Texas A&M University.

Velev’s presentation, “On-chip Liquid and Particle Manipulation by AC Electric Fields: Applications in Colloidal Assembly and Microfluidics,” is scheduled from 3-4 p.m. in Rm. 106 of the Jack E. Brown Building. His presentation is sponsored by Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Velev will detail how dielectrophoresis, particle interaction with external AC fields, could be used to manipulate and assemble objects on any size scale. The structures that could be assembled on a chip include microwires from metallic nanoparticles, switchable photonic crystals and biocomposite “wires” and membranes. Velev says an additional level of complexity can be engineered to turn various types of miniature semiconductor diode particles into prototypes of self-propelling micromachines and micropumps.

Velev’s research focuses on the area of nanostructures with electrical and photonic functionality, biosensors and microfluidic devices. He was the first to synthesize “inverse opals”, one of the most widely studied types of photonic materials. He also has pioneered principles for microscopic biosensors with direct electrical detection, discovered novel types of self-assembling supraparticles, microwires and designed new microfluidic chips.

Velev received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria while also spending one year as a researcher in Nagayama Protein Array Project in Japan. After graduating in 1996, Velev accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Delaware. In 2001 he formed his new research group in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University and was promoted to full professor in 2008.

In honor of Professor J.D. Lindsay, Texas A&M’s first chemical engineering department head, the department established the Lindsay Lecture Series to bring speakers to the university. Coming from both industry and academia, the lecturers are recognized for their accomplishments in the practice, teaching and/or research of chemical engineering. The series also allows the lecturers several days for visiting the university and the department and for exchanging ideas on teaching and research objectives and methods.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Sept. 11, 2009 – Paula T. Hammond, the Bayer Chair Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will discuss her research Wednesday, Sept. 16, kicking off the Fall 2009 J.D. Lindsay Lecture Series at Texas A&M University.

Hammond’s presentation, “Electrostatic Assemblies: Reactive to Responsive Thin Films for Energy and Biomaterials Applications,” is scheduled from 3-4 p.m. in Rm. 106 of the Jack E. Brown Building. Her presentation is sponsored by Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Hammond’s work encompasses two major areas: the development of new biomaterials via nano to microscale fabrication using directed and self-assembly of polymers, including drug delivery thin films with temporal control and novel polymer architectures for targeted nanoparticle drug and gene delivery; and self-assembled materials systems for electrochemical energy devices, including fuel cells, batteries and photovoltaics.

Throughout her distinguished career, Hammond has been awarded the NSF CAREER Award, the EPA Early Career Award, the DuPont Young Faculty Award and the Junior Bose Faculty Award at MIT. Her work in nanomaterials has been recognized and featured in several venues, including the journal “Nature” and as one of the “Top 100 Science Stories of 2008” in “Discover Magazine.” Hammond also has been featured in “Popular Mechanics” as a recipient of the Breakthrough Award as well as in “The Economist,” “Forbes Magazine” and “Technology Review.”

Hammond earned her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from MIT in 1984, her master’s degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1988 and her doctoral degree in chemical engineering from MIT in 1993. From 1993 to 1995, she held the NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemistry while working at Harvard University’s chemistry department.

In honor of Professor J.D. Lindsay, Texas A&M’s first chemical engineering department head, the department established the Lindsay Lecture Series to bring speakers to the university. Coming from both industry and academia, the lecturers are recognized for their accomplishments in the practice, teaching and/or research of chemical engineering. The series also allows the lecturers several days for visiting the university and the department and for exchanging ideas on teaching and research objectives and methods.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, March 27, 2009 – Daniel V. Pack, associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will discuss his research into gene delivery methods Wednesday, April 1 as part of the final lecture in the Spring 2009 J.D. Lindsay Lecture Series at Texas A&M University.

Pack is scheduled to present “(Re)Engineering Gene Delivery: Toward Construction of Artificial Viruses” from 3-4 p.m. in Rm. 106 of the Jack E. Brown Building. His presentation is sponsored by Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Human gene therapy holds the potential to revolutionize treatment of diseases ranging from cystic fibrosis to cardiovascular disease to cancer, but the success of the technology awaits development of safe and efficient methods for gene delivery, Pack says. Efficient gene delivery demands a material that is capable of escorting genes through the body to the desired tissue or cell type, as well as directing genes through an intracellular obstacle course and into the nucleus, he adds.

“Our studies of polyplex trafficking challenge currently accepted gene delivery mechanisms,” Pack says. “In addition, we are developing a new class of hybrid nanovectors comprising both viral and synthetic components that combine several of the advantages of the component systems.”

Pack’s research interests focus on applications of chemical engineering principles to biomedical problems. His research group’s goals are to use engineering principles to understand the obstacles to safe, efficient, and effective drug delivery, and to use an engineering approach to design improved drug delivery methodologies.

Pack’s projects include the re-engineering of recombinant viruses to generate enhanced gene therapy vectors; the design and synthesis of novel materials for safe and efficient gene delivery; and the development of precision-release drug delivery systems.

Among his professional distinctions, Pack has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation in 2002 and served as a Beckman Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2004-2005. In addition, he received a Xerox Award for Faculty Research in 2008.

Pack received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1900 and his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1997. Prior to beginning his career at the University of Illinois, Pack was a National Institutes of Health post-doctoral fellow with Robert Langer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In honor of Professor J.D. Lindsay, Texas A&M’s first chemical engineering department head, the department established the Lindsay Lecture Series to bring speakers to the university. Coming from both industry and academia, the lecturers are recognized for their accomplishments in the practice, teaching and/or research of chemical engineering. The series also allows the lecturers several days for visiting the university and the department and for exchanging ideas on teaching and research objectives and methods.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, March 23, 2009 – Howard Brenner, W. H. Dow Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will discuss his hydrodynamics research Wednesday, March 25 as part of the Spring 2009 J.D. Lindsay Lecture Series at Texas A&M University.

Brenner is scheduled to present “Bi-velocity Hydrodynamics and Transport Processes” from 3-4 p.m. in Rm. 106 of the Jack E. Brown Building. His presentation is sponsored by Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Brenner’s research interests focus on modeling chromatographic bio-particle separation processes in microfluidic devices and quantifying the molecular and convective transport of volume, viewed as a transportable, non-material entity.

The recipient of numerous honors and distinctions earned throughout a distinguished academic career, Brenner has been recognized with the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Lewis, Walker and Alpha Chi Sigma Awards, the American Society for Engineering Education’s Senior Research Gold Medal Award, the American Chemical Society’s Kendall Award in Colloid Science, and the Bingham Medal of the Society of Rheology.

In addition, he has co-authored three fluid dynamics books, “Low Reynolds Number Hydrodynamics,” “Interfacial Transport Processes and Rheology,” and “Macrotransport Processes.” Brenner holds membership in the National Academies of Science and Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Brenner received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Pratt Institute in 1950 and his Ph.D. from New York University in 1957. Throughout the course of a 49-year career, Brenner has served as a faculty member at New York University, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Rochester and MIT, where he is the W.H. Dow Professor Emeritus.

In honor of Professor J.D. Lindsay, Texas A&M’s first chemical engineering department head, the department established the Lindsay Lecture Series to bring speakers to the university. Coming from both industry and academia, the lecturers are recognized for their accomplishments in the practice, teaching and/or research of chemical engineering. The series also allows the lecturers several days for visiting the university and the department and for exchanging ideas on teaching and research objectives and methods.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, March 12, 2009 – Bradley F. Chmelka, professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will discuss his research Wednesday, March 18 as part of the Spring 2009 J.D. Lindsay Lecture Series at Texas A&M University.

Chmelka’s presentation is scheduled from 3-4 p.m. in Rm. 106 of the Jack E. Brown Building. His presentation is sponsored by Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Chmelka’s research, he explains, is motivated by the need to understand at a molecular level the fabrication and functions of new catalysts, adsorbents, porous ceramics and heterogeneous polymers. These categories of technologically important materials are linked by their crucial dependencies on local order/disorder, which often governs macroscopic process or device performance.

Through development and application of state-of-the-art techniques of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Chmelka’s research group observes common molecular features among these diverse systems, which he says provide new insights and design intuition for materials chemistry and engineering objectives.

Throughout his distinguished career, Chmelka has received numerous honors, including being named holder of the Meyerhoff Visiting Professorship from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. He also has been named holder of the Chalmers Jubilee Visiting Professorship from Chalmers University in Goteborg, Sweden. In addition he has served as visiting professor to the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel; Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain; and the University of Paris, Jussieu.

Chmelka has received the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Award, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Award and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award.

Chmelka received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1982 from Arizona State University and his Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of California, Berkeley.

In honor of Professor J.D. Lindsay, Texas A&M’s first chemical engineering department head, the department established the Lindsay Lecture Series to bring speakers to the university. Coming from both industry and academia, the lecturers are recognized for their accomplishments in the practice, teaching and/or research of chemical engineering. The series also allows the lecturers several days for visiting the university and the department and for exchanging ideas on teaching and research objectives and methods.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, March 5, 2009 – David A. Kofke, professor and chair of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, will discuss his thermodynamics research Wednesday, March 11 as part of the Spring 2009 J.D. Lindsay Lecture Series at Texas A&M University.

Kofke is scheduled to present “The Easy Phases Can Still Provide Interest, Challenge and Opportunity” from 3-4 p.m. in Rm. 106 of the Jack E. Brown Building. His presentation is sponsored by Texas A&M’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.

Kofke’s expertise is in molecular simulation. His research interests consider the development and understanding of molecular simulation methods, particularly as they pertain to free-energy calculations and configurational integrals in general. He also considers a variety of applications of molecular simulation.

While there are good, solvable reference systems that can be used as a starting point for the characterization of gas and solid phases, there is no such starting point for the description of liquid phases, Kofke says. This, coupled with the richness of their behavior, is part of what makes them intellectually challenging, he explains, emphasizing their relevance to chemical engineering, particularly in the growth areas of nano and biotechnology.

Author of nearly 100 refereed publications, Kofke received a Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1990, the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1994, and in Research and Creative Activity in 2004. He is the 2004 recipient of the triennial John M. Prausnitz Award for applied chemical thermodynamics, and in 2007 he was awarded the Jacob F. Schoellkopf Medal from the Western New York Section of the America Chemical Society.

Kofke received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1983 from Carnegie-Mellon University and his Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1989 he has been on the chemical engineering faculty of the University at Buffalo (SUNY), where he holds the rank of UB Distinguished Professor.

In honor of Professor J.D. Lindsay, Texas A&M’s first chemical engineering department head, the department established the Lindsay Lecture Series to bring speakers to the university. Coming from both industry and academia, the lecturers are recognized for their accomplishments in the practice, teaching and/or research of chemical engineering. The series also allows the lecturers several days for visiting the university and the department and for exchanging ideas on teaching and research objectives and methods.

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