Excellence Awards Banquet Honors Outstanding Women Engineers The Excellence Awards Banquet is held every year by Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering to celebrate the academic excellence and leadership of its undergraduate female students. This event brings together students, alumni, corporate partners, and Institute leaders to recognize the accomplishments of female engineering students who have achieved “high honors” status by earning a cumulative GPA of 3.35 or above. As a testimony to the excellence of CoE’s female undergraduate students, more than 500 women, representing nearly a third of its female students, qualified for recognition at the event this spring. Ninety-nine of the students are majoring in ChBE. The banquet also provides a platform to recognize student and faculty leaders through Student Mentoring Awards, Faculty Mentoring Awards, and Teaching Excellence Awards, which are given annually. The overwhelming support of many companies for the banquet reflects a genuine commitment to the success and engagement of women engineers as they develop into future leaders. These corporate sponsors are committed to increasing the number of women in the technical, engineering, and scientific fields. The active role of corporate sponsors gives them the opportunity to positively impact the careers of the best and brightest women students at GT. The banquet is made possible by a grant from the Kimberly Clark Corporation. This year, 88 ChBE undergraduate women qualified for recognition by receiving a GPA of 3.35 or above. These students are: Samantha Collins Anderson, Joselyn Baety, Jennifer Botwin, Felicity Brower, Courtney Brown, Viktoriya Buchko, Jessica Ong Calkins, Olivia Campos, Brittney Caristinos, Birgitta Caspersen, Alma Castaneda, Candice Castellino, Sarah Jia-Hwa Chang, Lauren Cheplen, Katherine Croft, Whitney Davis, Kristina Deliso, Caitlin East, News Briefs continued from page 6 Society National Meeting on “Combinatorial Materials Development,” at the Flanders Materials Centre “Workshop on Highthroughput Development of Organic and Inorganic Coatings” in Ghent, Belgium, and at the Dutch Polymer Institute at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Dr. Sankar Nair received the Sigma Xi Young Faculty Award for 2008. Kimberly Nelson, Ph.D. ‘07, received IPST’s 2007 Student of the Year Award. She conducted her doctoral work under the guidance of Dr. Yulin Deng. Dr. Mark Prausnitz is currently working on a transdermal delivery system for drug and alcohol addiction in collaboration with pharmacists at the University of Kentucky. The ongoing project involves collaboration with researchers in GT’s School of Chemistry and others from Mercer University. Dr. Prausnitz, Jin Liu, Ph.D. ‘04, and their collaborator were issued a new patent entitled “Assessment and Control of Acoustic Tissue Effects.” Additionally, Dr. Prausnitz received $11.5 million, along with Richard Compans at Emory University, as the principal investigators on a pair of grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health to develop self-administered flu vaccine patches delivered using painless microneedles as an alternative to hypodermic needles. Dr. Matthew Realff served as chair of the committee that developed a new sustainable carpet standard, which was approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and addresses chemicals and materials used in manufacturing carpet, the energy used in production, the use of recycled or bio-based content, methods of disposal and/or reuse, and the overall environmental performance of manufacturers.
Stephanie England, Shreya Erramilli, Yichen Fang, Ashley Farmer, Karissa Fleming, Iva Franjkic, Laura Cullen Frisbie, Erika Gemzer, Anne Guzzardi, Megan Harris, Holly Hicks, Pamela Jackson, Laura Janke, Emily Jennings, Eunhye Jeong, Erica Johnson, Hye Jin Kim, Nisha Mary Kurian, Bomy Lee Chung, Stephanie Lohr, Kristen Long, Amy McDaniel, Kathrine McFadden, Sarah McKibben, Shazia Mohammad, Danielle Murray, Ashley Newton, Cintia Nojima, Mona Himanshu Parikh, Sohyun Park, Jalpa Shantilal Patel, Krupa R. Patel, Nalini D. Patel, Huong Van Pham, Jacey Planteen, Gina Polimeni, Evelina Ponizhaylo, Anita Prakash, Kaycee Quarles, Jacqueline Rand, Alexandra Reavis, Alana Reynolds, Angela Rice, Carrie Ripberger, Erin Rives, Allison Roberts, Lauren Russell, Georgina Schaefer, Sydney Shaffer, Megan Shenstone, Kierston Shill, Amanda Sills, Arlyne Bellamin Simon, Kendele Snodgrass, Stephanie Springfield, Olesya Sukhareva, Jessica Swearengen, Jemilat Bamidele Taiwo, Anne Douglas Talley, Katherine Taylor, Mongquy Vuong To, Kathryn Reid Tramonte, Trinh Phuong Vo, Kellie Walker, Caroline Whitaker, Allison Wing, Meng-Chuan Wu, Hua-Hsiang C. Yu, Merin Zachariah, and Roshu Mary Zachariah. Additionally, 11 outstanding ChBE students received $1000 scholarships at the banquet. Air Products presented awards to Courtney Brown and Erin Rives; Alcoa to Karissa Fleming; Dow to Bomy Lee Chung; IBM to Ashley Newton; Kimberly Clark to Lauren Cheplen, Stephanie Lohr, and Carrie Ripberger; Milliken to Sarah McKibben; and Shell to Erika Gemzer and Jemilat Bamidele Taiwo. ChBE is proud of its best and brightest students and congratulates these 99 women for being some of the best of the best.
Graduate student Keith Reed served as one of four student members on the Georgia Tech Advisory Board for 2007-08. Dr. Amyn Teja presented a seminar entitled “Synthesis and Deposition of Inorganic Nanoparticles in Nearcritical Water” to the college of engineering faculty at Koc University in Instanbul, Turkey at the invitation of their provost, Dr. Yaman Arkun, who was formerly a member of GT’s ChBE faculty. Dr. Teja and his students Anupama Kasturirangan, James Falabella, and Michael Beck also presented three papers at the 10th International Conference on Fluid Properties and Phase Equilibria for Process and Product Design held in Crete, Greece last spring.
ChBE’s Association of Chemical Engineering Graduate Students (AChEGS) held the 20th Annual Graduate Student Symposium in March. Representatives from 12 corporations attended the event where graduate students showcased their research through oral presentations and poster sessions. From first to third place, award recipients for oral presentations were: Michelle Kasner, Michael Romeo, and Vittoria Blasucci, and for poster presentations the winners were: Imona Omole, Chris Gill, and Anne Ruffing. Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. sponsored the second annual Undergraduate Student Symposium in April. The Symposium was designed to provide ChBE undergraduates who participate in research the opportunity to present their work in a public forum. The School gratefully acknowledges Air Products for their sponsorship of both the Symposium and a series of undergraduate awards to support research. From first to third place, this year’s award winners were: Cintia Nojima, Patrick Romine, and Michael Nolan.
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