UF ChE News_Summer/Fall 2015

S U M M E R / FA L L 2 0 1 5

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING NEWS

L AT E S T N E W S T H E D E PA R T M E N T WELCOMES NEW FA C U LT Y M E M B E R

C O V E R S T O RY

PA G E 7

THE UNIT OPS LAB UNDERGOES MAJOR R E N O VAT I O N S

F E AT U R E D R E S E A R C H

PA G E 1 0

FA C U LT Y R E S E A R C H F E AT U R E D O N J O U R NA L C O V E R S PA G E 4

FA C U LT Y P R O F E S S O R S H I P W I N N E R S

PA G E 5

W W W.CH E . U F L . ED U

CHAI R’S M ESSAGE To be added to our communications list or to send us your story, send an email to Monique Phears at mphears@che.ufl.edu.

GREETINGS FROM GAINESVILLE!

I am also very pleased to announce the new recipients of our endowed faculty positions! These include the Charles A. Stokes Professor, Carlos Rinaldi; the Fred and Bonnie Edie

Dr. Richard Dickinson DEPA RTM ENT C HA I R The Gator ChemE family is growing! I am very pleased to announce that Dr. David D. Hibbitts, will be joining the Chemical Engineering Department starting Fall 2015. Dr. Hibbitts received his PhD from the University of Virginia from the

Professor, Fan Ren; the ExxonMobil Gator Chemical Engineering Alumni Professor, Mark Orazem; and our newest endowed position, the William and Tracy Cirioli Professor, Jason Weaver. Congratulations to all of our new endowed professors, and our sincere appreciation to the generous alumni and friends of the department who made it possible to honor our outstanding faculty in this meaningful way.

group of Matt Neurock (now at Minnesota), and he recently

The next time you are in Gainesville, please allow us to

completed his postdoctoral appointment with Enrique Igle-

give you a tour of our newly refurbished unit operations

sia at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Hibbitts is

laboratory! A generous $500K donation has allowed us to

an expert in heterogeneous catalysis for reactions of fossil-

make substantial improvements to the lab, including a new

or biomass-based chemicals. The department continues to

thin-film evaporator unit, a new control system for the

build strong visibility in this important research area. We

distillation columns, and several new benchtop modules.

are continuing our search for one Assistant Professor this

The Lab Director, Dmitry Kopelevich assisted by Distin-

year, and will continue that search again next year.

guished Professor Fan Ran and our lab technician, Jim

Congratulations to Jennifer Curtis for receiving 2015 F. J. and Dorothy Van Antwerpen Award for Service to the Institute!

This is an AIChE Board of Directors’ Award and one of the most prestigious awards offered by AIChE; it recognizes Jennifer’s numerous activities in professional leadership, including service on the AIChE Board of Directors, the Executive Board of the Program Committee, and the Publications

Hinnant, has done a wonderful job implementing these improvements. Thanks to their hard work and leadership and the support of our donors, the lab is in excellent physical and financial health. As you know, the hands-on experience offered by the lab is critical training for our future chemical engineers, and we are very happy to have one of the few labs in the country with pilot scale equipment.

Committee. She is currently Associate Editor of the AIChE Journal, Co-Editor of Chemical Engineering Education, and

We are planning another marquis event at the 2015

Past Chair of the Particle Technology Forum. Thank you,

Annual AICHE Meeting in Salt Lake City. Please join us for a

Jennifer, for your tremendous service to the Chemical Engi-

dessert reception on Tuesday, November 10th at 8pm, at

neering profession and for bringing such great distinction

the Trofi Restaurant on the first floor of the Hilton.

to the Department! I hope you can all attend the presentation of this award, which will take place at the Honors

If you are attending the meeting or will be in the area,

Ceremony, held during AIChE’s 2015 Annual Meeting in Salt

please stop by and help us celebrate another successful

Lake City, Utah, on the evening of Sunday, November 8th.

2

year for the department!

SUM M ER /FA L L 2 0 1 5

FACULT Y N E WS ................ 4 AN D AWAR DS FACULT Y H IGH LIGHT .......... 7 David Hibbitts , Assista nt Professor

ALUM N I H IG H LIGHT .......... 8 Alex Moreno, ‘8 3

“

UN IT OPS UP DATE............ 10 STUDENT N E WS ............... 12 ECS Student C ha pter, Limbitless Solutions

STUDENT H IGH LIGHT ....... 14 Undergraduate Aa ron Thomas

STUDENT AWAR DS ........... 15

Chemical Engineering Student Safety Council In response to a recent awareness of the need for improved safety culture in university laboratories, the Department of

Dr. Cammy Abernathy

Chemical Engineering has formed the

DEAN OF ENGINEERING

Chemical

Engineering

(CHE)

Student

Safety Council (SSC). The membership

Dr. Richard Dickinson D E PA R T M E N T C H A I R

of the council comprises the Laboratory Safety Managers from each research group in the department. Other gradu-

Monique Phears M A R K E T I N G C O O R D I N AT O R

ate students are also invited to join the CHESSC. The goal of the CHESSC is to improve the safety culture in the department, making the research laboratories a safer place to work. Their first action was

ON TH E COVER

Photo: Unit Operation Lab’s Thin Film Evaporator; Students Tyler Burkett, James Fong, Thomas Goodall and Jacob Kerr

to create new safety training modules that emphasize hazards that are specific to chemical engineering laboratories.

Members of the CHESSC presented some of their modules to incoming graduate students during our first annual graduate student safety orientation in August.

Laboratory Safety Managers (Advisor)

D E PA R T M E N T O F CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Shihyun Ahn (Ren) Samer Alam (Lele) Mert Arca (Butler) Husain Baaqel (Crisalle)

Ju Hee Choi (Weaver) Phillip Dixon (Chauhan) Arthur Dizon (Orazem) Akshita Dutta (Vasenkov) Dr. Samuel Gause(*) (Chauhan) Hankook Kim (Anderson) Pratik Kothary (Jiang) Tian Lan (Tseng) Sin-Yen Leo (Jiang) Lorena Maldonado-Camargo (Rinaldi) Sarah Mena (Curtis) Anh Nguyen (Kopelevich) Rahul Rai (Weaver) Samantha Roberts (Hagelin-Weaver) Kevin Ward (Narayanan) Justin Wong (Ziegler) Dr. Jun Yin(*) (Tseng)

Volunteer Members (Advisor) Yogita A Deshpande (Hagelin-Weaver) Evan Forman (Vasenkov) Karishma Gupta (Chauhan) Morgan Harding (Orazem) Andreina Lam (Rinaldi) Tao Li (Weaver) Blayne Phillips (Jiang) Chun-Chieng Wang (Narayanan) Goutham Kotamreddy (Crisalle) (*) Recent Graduate 3

Faculty News & Awards

S E E L I N K S F O R T H E S E S TO R I E S A N D M O R E AT C H E . U F L . E D U

PENG JIANG S M A R T S H A P E M E M O R Y P O LY M E R S P U B L I S H E D I N N AT U R E C O M M U N I C AT I O N S

Led by a Chemical Engineering graduate student Yin Fang, Prof. Jiang’s group has recently pioneered a new type of shape memory polymer that can be instantaneously triggered by applying an external pressure or by exposing to a large variety of vapors, such as acetone and toluene. The results have recently been published in Nature Communications (doi: 10.1038/ncomms8416) and Advanced Materials (doi: 10.1002/ adma.201500835). Dr. Curtis Taylor from UF Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Dr. Vito Basile from National Council of Research, Italy are major collaborators of the work. DTRA, NASA, and NSF sponsored this discovery.

FAN REN RESEARCH ARTICLES MAKE “TOP CITED” LISTS

The Editor in Chief of the Journals of Vacuum Science and Technology (JVST) A and B has just announced that two of Prof. Fan Ren’s research articles are both highly cited and have made the JVST A and JVST B top cited lists for 2014. An email blast was sent to thousands of people to recognize the highly cited articles. Additionally, Prof. Ren’s article in JVST B was selected as Editors’ Pick.

JASON BUTLER & TONY LADD R E S E A R C H F E AT U R E D O N T H E C OV E R O F S O F T M AT T E R

The cover of the latest issue of Soft Matter features research performed by doctoral candidate Mert Arca and Professors Butler and Ladd on the dynamics of DNA. The work examines the lateral migration of DNA during transport through a microfluidic channel by a combination of flow fields and electric fields.

The results validate an improved model of DNA dynamics and indicate that the motion of DNA can be controlled for technological purposes using a very simple mechanism.

Volume 51 Number 69 7 September 2015 Pages 13333–13422

ChemComm Chemical Communications www.rsc.org/chemcomm

SERGEY VASENKOV & KIRK ZIEGLER N M R O B S E RVAT I O N O F S I N G L E - F I L E D I F F U S I O N O F M I X T U R E S F E AT U R E D ON THE COVER OF CHEMICAL C O M M U N I C AT I O N S

The front cover of the last issue of Chemical Communications features high field diffusion NMR studies of single-file diffusion performed by PhD student Akshita Dutta under the advisement of Dr. Sergey Vasenkov and Dr. Kirk J Ziegler. Single-file diffusion (SFD) is the diffusion in narrow channels where molecules cannot pass one another. Recent theoretical and computational studies suggest that induction of SFD conditions in nanoporous membranes and catalysts can lead to a dramatic enhancement of the performance of these systems in separations and catalysis, respectively. The featured communication opens up experimental studies of such performance enhancement by reporting first experimental evidence of SFD in a mixture of different types of diffusing species. This work was performed in collaboration with the group of Dr. Russ Bowers, Chemistry Department, UF. ISSN 1359-7345

COMMUNICATION Sergey Vasenkov et al.

Relationship between single-file diffusion of mixed and pure gases in dipeptide nanochannels by high field diffusion NMR

4

FA C U LT Y N E W S & AWA R D S

P ROFESSORSH I PS 1

2

Fan Ren

Mark Orazem

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR

Fan Ren is awarded the Fred and Bonnie Edie Professorship.

Professor Ren is responsible for the innovative transformation of the way we educate students in our labs and in our Master’s program. He has initiated groundbreaking and seminal research in the field of electronic materials and devices, pioneered the use of wide bandgap semiconductor sensors for chemical and biological detections and developed semiconductor-based hydrogen sensors capable of ppm detection sensitivity. He has 34 patents, 877 publications and 29,160 citations.

Mark Orazem is awarded the ExxonMobil Gator Chemical Engineering Alumni Professorship. Professor Orazem is an expert in impedance spectroscopy for electrochemical engineering applications and his research ranges from fundamental to applied.

He has recently been appointed Adjunct Professor at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. He has received nearly 3000 citations in the last five years which includes a text on Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy.

3

4

Carlos Rinaldi

Jason Weaver

PROFESSOR

PROFESSOR

Carlos Rinaldi is awarded the Charles A. Stokes Professorship.

Professor Rinaldi has made pioneering, transformative contributions to the engineering of magnetic nanoparticle suspensions and fundamental contributions to the physical understanding of nanoscale thermal phenomena. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and has recently been awarded two competitive NIH R21 Grants and an NSF grant.

Jason Weaver is awarded the William P. and Tracy Cirioli Term Professorship. Professor Weaver has developed a world-renowned research program at UF that focuses on the growth and surface chemistry of oxide films that are important in applications of heterogeneous catalysis. In addition to funding from the DOE and NSF, Prof. Weaver recently received a substantial grant from a private company to conduct fundamental studies on the catalytic transformations of methane.

5

FA C U LT Y N E W S & AWA R D S

F. J. AND DOROTHY VAN ANTWERPEN AWARD Dr. Jennifer Sinclair Curtis, Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and AIChE Fellow, receives the 2015 F. J. and Dorothy Van Antwerpen Award for Service to the Institute! The Van Antwerpen Award is an AIChE Board of Directors’ Award which recognizes Dr. Curtis’ numerous activities in professional leadership, including service on the AIChE Board of Directors, the Executive Board of the Program Committee, and the Publications Committee. She is currently Associate Editor of the AIChE Journal, Co-Editor of Chemical Engineering Education, and Past Chair of the Particle Technology Forum.

As Associate Dean for Research at the University of Florida, Dr. Curtis supports faculty and researchers in developing and maintaining internationally recognized research programs, includ-

Jennifer Sinclair-Curtis

ing promoting interdisciplinary research, working with research sponsors, and coordinating the college’s research institutes and shared user research facilities. Curtis also serves as Director of the Florida Energy Systems Consortium, which promotes collaboration between Florida’s public universities to conduct research, education and commercialization in energy technology.

Curtis’ research focuses on the flow behavior of particles, with applications ranging from food processing, pharmaceutical manufacture, and the aerospace, energy and mining industries to nat-

T H I S AWA R D W I L L B E P R E S E N T E D

ural processes such as debris flows and sediments. The impact of her work has been recognized

AT T H E H O N O R S C E R E M O N Y AT

through numerous research awards including AIChE’s Thomas Baron Award for Fluid-Particle

THE AICHE ANNUAL MEETING ON

Systems and AIChE’s Fluidization Lectureship Award.

S U N D AY, N O V E M B E R 8 T H , 2 0 1 5 .

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR ANNOUNCED The Department of Chemical Engineering is proud to announce that Mark E. Orazem has been recognized as Distinguished Professor. Professor Mark Orazem holds the ExxonMobil Chemical Engineering Alumni and the University of Florida Research Foundation Term Professorships and is an Adjunct Professor at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology.

Many of his contributions have been in the area of impedance spectroscopy, a powerful analytic tool employed in all aspects of electrochemistry, including energy devices, corrosion, and sensors.

Professor Orazem has over 180 refereed publications and has co-authored, with Bernard Tribollet of the CNRS in Paris, a popular textbook entitled, Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy.

The Chinese translation of this textbook was published by the Chemical Industry Press in 2014.

Mark E. Orazem

Professor Orazem serves as a consultant to a new international graduate program at the University of Yamanashi in Japan, as well as to a variety of industries. In 2012, Professor Orazem received the Henry B. Linford Award of the Electrochemical Society for Distinguished Teaching.

Professor Orazem is a Fellow of The Electrochemical Society and served for ten years as Associate Editor for the Journal of the Electrochemical Society. He has also served as President of the International Society of Electrochemistry.

6

FA C U LT Y H I G H L I G H T

Dr.

DAVID HIBBITTS A S S I S TA N T P R O F E S S O R I N CHEMICAL ENGINEERING CHEMICAL ENGINEERING IS PROUD TO WELCOME A N E W F A C U LT Y M E M B E R .

multiple techniques to study a variety of

renewable resources will be made possible through the design of catalysts, including

state-of-the-art density functional theory calculations to achieve an atomic-level understanding of heterogeneous catalysis.

His Ph.D. studies were at the University of Virginia (advised by Matthew Neurock) where he learned computational catalysis and from there he did a Post-Doc at the University of California at Berkeley (advised by Enrique Iglesia) where he used a combination of theory and experiments to study the production of fuels from

glycerol

er-Tropsch synthesis).

economy from petroleum-based fuels to

kinetic and isotopic experiments with

Au nanoparticles rapidly catalyze oxidation reactions, including those of biomass-derived glycerol to form glyceric acid, a chemical pre-cursor to polymers.

Hibbitts’ research group will combine

The desired shift in the global energy

Hibbitts’ research group will combine

1

carbon monoxide and hydrogen (Fisch-

2

gas to attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the use of supported noble metal and zeolite catalysts.

electro- and photo-catalysts. These catalyst

In addition to his research endeavors,

materials enable the efficient conversion of

Hibbitts is teaching a course in Molecular

feedstocks derived from biomass, natural

Understanding of Catalysis, available to

gas, and other emerging resources into

graduate Ph.D. and Master’s students this

value-added fuels and chemicals. Key to

fall. The course will cover a wide range of

the development of such catalysts is an

topics in heterogeneous catalysis, including

understanding of how they behave at the

synthesis, characterization, kinetic and iso-

molecular level, leading to structure-func-

topic studies, as well as the use of density

tion relationships which improve catalytic

functional theory and other computational

processes and guide catalyst discovery.

methods in the area of catalysis.

Pt mixed with ReOx creates acid sites in close proximity to metal surfaces when exposed to water, enabling bifunctional acid- and metal-catalyzed reactions to efficiently deoxygenate biomass-derived chemicals, such as hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF).

HMF glyceric acid

chemical conversions of biomass and shale

1,5-­‐diol

3

The behavior of active sites within zeolite catalysts are dictated by the size and shape of the voids created by walls made of Si and O atoms. Above a dimethylether molecule is H-bonded to an acid site, created by the placement of an Al3+ cation into the zeolite framework.

ALUMNI HIGHLIGHT

Alumni Highlight on

ALEX MORENO ‘83 University of Florida Chemical Engineering alum Alex Moreno (’83) has always seen himself building businesses, even before he began his undergraduate journey at UF. Alex Moreno accepts the first ChemE Alumni Professional Accomplishment in Entrepreneurship Award on April 17, 2015.

Mr. Moreno has successfully launched and developed a number of companies and projects—ranging from environmental services,

construction projects from small office ren-

ing to best practices for student success,

health care staffing, and construction and

ovations to multi-million dollar build-outs.

successes and failures in business and the

development—over the last 25 years. Prior to 1998, Mr. Moreno owned a company called A.M. Brown, which was a holding company for a variety of environmental businesses—soils and materials testing, environmental consulting, environmental testing and core drilling. He founded U.S. Biosystems in 1998 and it became one of the largest environmental testing laboratories in Florida. He has also managed

8

Powering The New Engineer

Mr. Moreno is currently the CEO and

need to “dream big”.

Co-founder of Nightingale Nurses (one of the fastest-growing healthcare staffing com-

TELL US A LITTLE AB OUT YOUR

pany in the US, with over 500 employees

BACKGROUND, WHERE YOU’RE FROM

and revenues in excess of $50 million). He is

AND WHY YOU CHOSE UF?

also the CEO and Founder of Panther Development Investments (providing diversified developmental services to Native American nations), with work in the areas of energy trading and investments.

I was born in Colombia. When I was 10, my family moved to Fort Lauderdale. I have five brothers and one sister, and I am the middle child in a very traditional family.

My older brother was the first to attend UF

Earlier this spring, Mr. Moreno

after finishing his undergrad at FAU, but

was invited back to campus as

I was the first one to attend college away

the keynote speaker at the 16th

from home [Fort Lauderdale] and my dad

Annual

Symposium.

had some very straightforward advice on

After receiving the 1st annual

my attending UF. He told me, “Great school.

ChemE

Professional

Go there”. I knew that UF was well known

Accomplishment in Entrepre-

for the engineering and medical programs.

neurship Award, we were very

I always wanted to be in engineering, how-

eager to talk with Mr. Moreno to

ever I remember walking into a hospital

find out the keys to his success.

and quickly realizing that was not the

Mr. Moreno was kind enough to

environment I wanted to be in for the rest

share several thoughts pertain-

of my life.

GRACE Alumni

ALUMNI HIGHLIGHT WHY DID YOU CHOOSE CHEMICAL ENGINEERING OVER OTHER ENGINEERING DISCIPLINES? My major was chemical engineering with a minor in electrical engineering. My cousin was an industrial engineering major and

son and to make mistakes. However, my

is what works; and your attitude has a huge

role as CEO is to find opportunities that

impact on where you end up—it’s not just

build the business, while my COO handles

about your brains. If students are having

day-to-day tasks. This allows me to focus

a hard time with classes or finding moti-

on the big picture and overall growth for

vation, I would tell them to just stay at it

the company.

and keep plugging. This is such a great life lesson because there are periods of life that

was also my roommate at UF. I chose ChemE

won’t be easy. [Achieving your dreams] is

as my major because it is pretty broad in

not an easy journey!

what you learn. You learn to see things in a holistic manner...in a big way—other engineering disciplines are focused in one area. I never wanted to change my major—I always wanted to expand on what I was learning in ChemE. After UF, and before starting my MBA program at Harvard, I worked at General Electric as part of the Chemical Metallurgical Management

“I purposely find time to spend m e a n i n g f u l m o m e n t s w i t h my w i f e and children to build lifelong memor i e s . I t i s t h e b e h av i o r I wa n t t o s e e my ch i ld ren e x empl i f y as t he y g row o l d e r, a n d I w o u l d e n c o u ra g e s t u d e n t s to think along these lines as well.”

HOW DO YOU STAY BALANCED IN YOUR PERSONAL LIFE? Maintaining a healthy work/ life balance is also important. I like to travel and spend time with my family. When you spend time with family, you lose focus on the everyday work “stuff” and you can focus on what’s most import-

Program, an elite and highly

ant. Family means everything

selective

to me and I purposely find

2-year

management

training program.

HOW WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE AS A CHEMICAL ENGINEERING STUDENT? I didn’t get a chance to socialize as much

time to spend meaningful WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE STUDENTS WHO ARE CURRENTLY IN THE CHEMICAL ENGINEERING PROGRAM AT UF?

as I could have with my fellow CHE classmates. That all as changed now and I would

When it comes to how a student can get

highly recommend students take advan-

themselves to stand out from others, life

tage of these opportunities. I did participate

has a way of separating achievers and

in waterskiing as extra activity, and tried

non-achievers. The ability to be motivated

moments with my wife and children to build lifelong memories. It is the behavior I want to see my children exemplify as they grow older, and I would encourage students to think along these lines as well. Work hard, dream big—but don’t lose sight of the things that really matter to you in life along the way.

to finish my degree in less than four years.

“Mr. Moreno has achieved above and

UF had quarters at the time, so I was able to

beyond in his career, understands the

load up on classes. I can recall in one class

value of the education he received at UF

I got an 80 on an exam, and the average in

and purposely finds time to come to cam-

the class was a 27. I was told that my score had to be disqualified or everyone else would fail!

PERTAINING TO YOUR BUSINESSES, HOW DO YOU RETAIN AND MOTIVATE YOUR EMPLOYEES? As for the businesses I have founded over the years, motivating my employees is among my highest priorities to driving success. I hold them to a high standard, but I give them the space to be their own per-

pus to pass along some of his knowledge and experience to our students—many of whom hope to one day follow in his footsteps as a successful entrepreneur,” says Department Chair, Rich Dickinson.

Doctoral student and President of GRACE, Samantha Roberts, agrees. “To hear from Mr. Moreno about his successes, failures and best practices in life and in business helps us students tremendously as we chart our own career paths. We are very thankful for his time and for his ongoing future mentorship.”

9

D E PA R T M E N T U P D AT E

unit ops update T

he Unit Operations Lab is one of few labs with pilot plant-scale equipment. Thanks to a generous

donation, the lab is currently undergoing substantial upgrades. Under the direction of faculty member Dmitry Kopelevich, these upgrades will significantly enhance students’ learning experience and will introduce them to state-of-the-art industrial equipment.

One of the major upgrades is a complete renovation of the control system for distillation columns, including installation of new Coriolis flow meters, guided wave radar level sensors, pressure transmitters and a rebuilding of control valves. These instru-

ments are managed by a new DeltaV control system, which supports the WirelessHART communication protocol, thus simplifying further upgrades to the control system by installation of wireless field devices.

The 50-year old thin film evaporator is also being replaced. The new evaporator system is being equipped with advanced sensors, including in-line refractometers for real-time analysis of feed and product compositions. Another system undergoing substantial renovation is the rotary drum filter, with upgrades focused on improving control over such system parameters as vacuum pressure and drum rotation speed.

10

Powering The New Engineer

SUBSTANTIAL CHANGE AN D UP GR ADES TO THE UNIT OPERATIONS LAB

5th year student, Zak Wright, works with the continuous filtration system.

Powering The New Engineer

11

Student Organization Restored ELECTROCHEMICAL SOCIETY STUDENT CHAPTER I S R E S T O R E D I N T H E D E PA R T M E N T O F C H E M I C A L ENGINEERING. The ECS Student Chapter at UF was restored this past spring under the guidance of CHE faculty member Dr. Mark Orazem. The kickoff meeting hosted speaker Dr. Bernard Tribollet of Université Pierre et Marie Curie. Dr. Tribollet’s talk gave an overview of electrochemical measurements and various applications. Student chapter officers were also elected at the first meeting to make up the executive board. A second successful meeting hosted speaker Dr. Kirk Ziegler, CHE faculty member. Dr. Ziegler’s talk focused on applications of electrochemistry within the field of nanotechnology for alternative

ALUMNI MAP

energy. While the ECS student chapter is newly reformed, we have members from several UF departments, which represent the wide range of electrochemical applications across campus. The student chapter has many exciting events planned for the upcoming year and would like to extend an invitation to anyone interested to contact Justin

AIChE has created a UF Chemical Engineering Alumni Map to serve as a helpful resource for ChE undergraduates! The map gives students the chance to network and see where a chemical engineering degree will take them.

To be on the map, send your information (e.g. your name, company/graduate school, location, and position/title) to Pearl Leung at leungp@ufl.edu.

View the map online at http:// www.che.ufl.edu/AIChE/ alumni_map.html.

12

Wong, ECS Student Chapter President, at jwong89@ufl.edu for more information.

STUDENT NEWS

Limbitless Solutions of additive manufacturing to supply

is comprised of 3D-printed parts as well

bionic limbs for kids with disabilities.

as components that can be easily found

The Limbitless Solutions: Gainesville Branch was established at the end of the Spring 2015 semester, and is the first satellite location of Limbitless Solutions to be created. The branch is mostly comprised of students from

and ordered on Amazon. All together, the arm costs less than $350 in parts and is relatively simple to assemble.

The printed arm provides an affordable solution to a child constantly outgrowing their prosthetic arm.

engineering majors, but also includes After attending an inspirational workshop in March 2015, a group of Gators, including

ChemE

undergrad

Tanya

majors ranging from biology to computer science.

The branch is also involved in the orga-

Therathanakorn, knew that they had to

nization’s

get involved with Limbitless Solutions.

project and their current “Books and

Limbitless Solutions is a non-profit

Bionics”

organization was founded at the Uni-

aims to deliver 75 bionic arms and books

versity of Central Florida in 2014 and

for displaced Syrian children.

is focused on creating a world without limb deficiency. Limbitless Solutions firmly believes that no one should profit from a child missing an arm. The organization utilizes the technology

“12

Arms

Indiegogo

for

Christmas”

campaign

which

In a span of eight weeks, students have worked to build a Limbitless test arm—

THE GAINESVILLE BRANCH IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON IMPROVEMENTS TO THE ARM, INCLUDING A MECHANICAL ELBOW, WATERPROOFING THE ELECTRONICS AND ENHANCING THE SIGNAL INPUTS FROM A CHILD.

For more info, please visit Limbitless-Solutions.org & 3DHope.com

the first steps towards being able to help kids in need. The Limbitless arm

13

STUDENT HIGHLIGHT

Community Effort This year, ChE undergraduate Aaron Thomas

Bolivian engineer and about 15-20 members

headed up the UF Engineers Without Borders

of the Aripalca community. Community input

team (EWB-UF) in Aripalca, Bolivia. The team

is utilized at every step to ensure the project

has been working in an agrarian community

will be maintained. Additionally, everything

of Aripalca for three years and is comprised of

that is built by EWB is made from local mate-

Chemical, Civil, Environmental and Mechani-

rials so that the community can repair the

cal Engineering students who give a great

system in case of flood damage.

deal of their free time during the year to see various projects make a lasting difference in the lives within the Bolivian community.

Thomas’ role as team lead on this project has been to organize the design, fundraising and overall construction. Managing the budget,

Located in a river valley, the Aripalca com-

coordinating trip logistics and design approv-

munity relies on an open channel irrigation

als and garnering support from various

system to deliver water to their fields during

Rotary Clubs all contributed to the project

the dry parts of the year (the communi-

being successfully completed on budget.

ty practices subsistence farming). During the wet season, the community experiences heavy rainfall and a swelling of the river.

This year’s project was to protect a particularly vulnerable portion of the irrigation system with a wall of 1x1x2 gabion blocks.

A gabion is a large wire cage filled with stones that acts as a protective structure. The wall constructed by EWB is 33 meters long, two rows high and was constructed over ten days by seven UF students, one professor, one

14

Aaron says, “As a student, it was an awesome chance to practice real project management and to take a design from concept to a physical structure. I learned an enormous amount about both the technical aspects of gabions and realistic construction and funding goals.

My greatest take away from the project has been the strength in numbers; a project of this scope can only happen with the contributions of many.”

Aaron Thomas (fourth from left in top photo)

S T U D E N T AWA R D S

AWA R D W I N N E R S NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION AWARD WINNER

Undergraduate Carmen Gil (3rd from left) won First Place in the Physics and Nanoscience category at the Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in STEM for her presentation “A Theoretical Investigation of Ferromagnetism in Doped Transition Metal Dichalcogenide WSe2”. The conference was held in February in Washington, DC. Carmen then presented her research at the 249th ACS National Conference in Denver.

Recent grad, Brad Ganoe ‘15, receives an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Award with his proposal on the development of semi-definite programming techniques for solving the quantum many-electron problem in chemistry.

Brad will be attending University of California, Berkeley to obtain his PhD in Chemistry. NSF awarded the GRF to 2,000 individuals from among 16,500 applicants this year.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based Master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.

K E V I N WA R D ChemE PhD Candidate, Kevin Ward, has recently been awarded four fellowships: The NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes Fellowship, The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, The Chateaubriand STEM Fellowship and The NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium Dissertation Improvement Fellowship.

Kevin joined the Department of Chemical Engineering in Fall 2013 after completing his BS in chemical engineering at North Carolina State University. During his first semester, he joined Dr. Ranga Narayanan’s lab to conduct research on fluid instabilities.

Since then, Kevin’s doctoral research has evolved into a study of Faraday instability generated through both traditional mechanical forcing and electrostatic forcing. This research involves both theoretical and experimental studies conducted at UF, the University of Lille 1 in Lille, France, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in Tsukuba, Japan. Applications of his research include enhanced mixing in microfluidic devices, a deeper understanding of liquid sloshing dynamics, space enabling operations, droplet movement, and enhancements to a wide array of processes through utilization of pulsatile forcing.

With his NSF EAPSI Fellowship, chose to travel to Tsukuba, Japan to

Kevin Ward with his fiancée Kimberly Marshburn

conduct research at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) along with Dr. Satoshi Matsumoto on Faraday instability generated via electrostatic oscillation.

The world-class research staff and availability of specialized equipment at JAXA allowed Kevin to conduct experimental research that will be compared to his theoretical work completed at UF. With the NSF GRF, Kevin will fund the remainder of his doctoral research on Faraday instability, as well as K-12 outreach and the broader dissemination of his research.

He plans to use the NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium Dissertation Improvement Fellowship to fund travel to multiple conferences, including the ASGSR 2015 Annual Meeting and the APS DFD 2015 Annual Meeting. He will also use those funds to design and produce experimental equipment for his research in France and Japan.

Kevin will use the Chateaubriand Fellowship to travel to Lille, France in January 2016 to conduct research with Dr. Farzam Zoueshtiagh at the University of Lille 1. He will spend 5 months in France to conduct experimental research on Faraday instability generated via mechanical oscillation in three-fluid systems, while pursuing a dual degree at UF and the University of Lille 1. The research conducted during the Chateaubriand fellowship will allow Kevin to validate theoretical models for three fluid Faraday systems that were developed during the first two years of his graduate study.

15

D E PA R T M E N T O F C H E M I C A L E N G I N E E R I N G P.O. BOX 116005 GAINESVILLE, FL 32611 W W W.CH E . UFL . ED U

EVENTS

AIChE Annual Meeting S A LT L A K E C I T Y, U TA H NOVEMBER 8 - 13

Join us in Utah!

T h e A IChE A nnua l Me etin g is th e p re mie r e d u c ationa l for um for ch e mic a l e n g in e e r s inte re s te d in innovation a n d p rof e s siona l g row th. Ac a d e mic a n d in d u s tr y ex p e r t s w ill cove r w id e ra n g e of topic s re l eva nt to cut tin g - e d g e re search, n ew te chnolo g ie s, a n d e m e rg in g g row th a reas in ch e mic a l e n g in e e rin g .

AICHE.ORG