Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture Archives

Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering Graduate Seminar Series

The Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering is hosting a seminar presented by Dr. Jerome Babauta, Sales Engineer, Gamry Instruments, on Monday, April 23, at 4:10 p.m. in ADBF 1002/FLOYD 256 (Tri-Cities).

Jerome Babauta received his Ph. D. in Chemical Engineering from Washington State University in 2012 in the area of electron transfer in biofilms. He specializes in the use of microsensors, electrochemistry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance to investigate the microenvironments inside electrode-respiring biofilms. His broader research interest is in the use of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy to study electrochemical phenomena. Currently he is a Sales Engineer at Gamry Instruments. Gamry Instruments manufactures potentiostats in support of electrochemical research.

Applications of electrochemistry in industry and its impact on education

Electrochemical techniques continue to play a pivotal role in supporting research in the fields of sensors, corrosion, coatings, battery testing, fuel cells, supercapacitors, and more. As a manufacturer of electrochemical instrumentation, Gamry maintains constant contact with the primary users of electrochemistry in industry. As a result, we have a wide perspective on electrochemical trends and techniques that researchers should be aware of—and the tools needed. This also indirectly informs us on the continuing importance of electrochemical education. My interest in electrochemical applications is to support faculty in integrating electrochemistry into the curriculum. In this presentation, I will discuss recent trends in electrochemical applications, new techniques, and summarize the common electrochemical concepts that we (Gamry) observe on a daily basis.

Construction Management & Architecture Senior Capstone Presentations

The spring 2018 Construction Management and Architecture Senior Capstone Presentations and Reception will be held on Thursday, April 26, 2018 at the Georgetown Ballroom (5623 Airport Way South, Seattle, WA).

Reception: 5:00–8:00 p.m.

Finalist Presentations: 5:45–7:20 p.m.

RSVP by April 20 to Jennifer Dean  (509–335–8096)

With special thanks to Vulcan Real Estate and our reception sponsor Oles Morrison Rinker Baker 

SDC 555: Global Engagement in Design and Construction Jordan 2018, Exhibit and Symposium

Please join us in viewing an exhibit showcasing the sights, scences, and narratives explored by students and faculty while on a trip in Jordan and as part of SDC 555, a global learning class. The exhibit will be followed by an informal symposium composed of presentations by the students examining certain desginated aspects of the country.

Carpenter Hall 114 (Exhibit opening @4:30pm)

Carpenter Hall 102 (Symposium)

 

SDC Commencement Celebration

Graduating students from the School of Design and Construction along with their families, faculty, and staff, are invited to attend a celebration prior to commencement on Saturday, May 5, hosted by the SDC. A reception will be held from 11am-12pm in Carpenter Hall and the “Graduation Showcase” will be on display in the gallery. We hope you will plan to join us for this special event, and congratulations to all our graduates!

The commencement ceremony for VCEA graduates will be at 3pm.

Microsoft’s Rick Bakken on Microsoft Cloud Service

Meet Rick Bakken, Senior Director of Data Evangelism at Microsoft Cloud and Infrastructure Operations! Learn more about the operations of one of the best physical networks on the planet!

Microsoft Cloud and Infrastructure Operations

MCIO is a Microsoft business unit responsible for designing, building and operating Microsoft unified global datacenters; managing demand planning and capacity utilization of the unified infrastructure; and for all the operations needed to run one of the physical networks on planet.

Rick Bakken

Rick Bakken is responsible for leading the evangelism of Microsoft’s datacenter infrastructure strategies and best practices in engagements with some of the company’s largest customers and partners aside global sales and marketing teams. His role is to work directly with the Microsoft technical & account teams providing expert services with customers and partners in exposing MCIO capabilities as a definitive Hyper Scale infrastructure authority.

As a professional speaker and eight-time winner of the Microsoft Executive Briefing Center Distinguished Speaker of the Year Award, he maintains exemplary presentation and communication skills required to assimilate concepts from various sources to disseminate strategic findings and recommendations to key senior decision makers. He delivers executive briefings (MS-EBC), CXO events, datacenter tours and direct to customer engagements. A veteran of the IT industry Rick has managed IT operations, sales and marketing, business development, procurement, global strategies, product development, technical support, manufacturing and supply chain. A 25-year veteran with Microsoft, he holds a BS in International Management from Muskingum University and is a member of the International Coaches Federation (ICF) and is a practicing executive speaker, mentor, musician, trainer and coach

Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering Graduate Seminar Series

The Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, the Department of Chemistry and the Center for Institutional Research Computing (CIRC) are co-hosting a seminar presented by Dr. Jim Pfaendtner, Jagjeet and Janice Bindra Endowed Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Washington on Monday, April 9, at 4:10pm in SPARK 227/FLOYD 256 (Tri-Cities), with refreshments served at 3:30pm.

Jim Pfaendtner is the Bindra Career Development Professor and Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington. He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering (Georgia Tech, 2001) and a PhD in Chemical Engineering (Northwestern University, 2007). Additional appointments include Senior Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Lab and a Senior Data Science Fellow at the UW eScience Institute. Jim’s research focus is computational molecular science and his recent teaching interests are in the area of teaching data science skills to grad students in chemical and materials science and engineering. Jim is a recipient of an NSF CAREER the University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Award. Jim is currently the director of an NSF graduate training program (NRT) at the intersection of data science and clean energy.

Using Computer Simulations to Understand and Control Chemical and Biochemical Reactions at Extreme Conditions

Complex reacting systems are ubiquitous in the natural and engineered world. In this talk I will primarily focus on our recent goals of creating and using complex reaction networks to support the development of fast pyrolysis and combustion processes. The use of fast pyrolysis is attractive due to the huge range of potential products that can be produced – which is also the Achilles heel of the approach (i.e., selectivity and yield of desired compounds). Complicating this situation is the fact that biomass pyrolysis is multiphase and, at the industrial scale, can be severely heat and mass transfer limited. This compounds challenges in our ability to design and optimize new processes.

The first part of the talk will show how we are using tools of data science (data visualization and machine learning) to study lignin pyrolysis. I will demonstrate with a simple coupled transport / kinetics model the issues facing scale up and design of pyrolysis processes. Following that a detailed kinetic model of lignin pyrolysis that predicts measureable behavior across a wide range of species and conditions will be introduced. Finally, the use of machine learning and neural networks for obtaining a four order of magnitude increase in speed for kinetic models will be shown. The remainder of the talk will be spent discussing how we are using molecular dynamics simulations to discover new complex chemical reactions at extreme conditions (pyrolysis and combustion) – addressing the challenge of how to study complex reacting systems when we don’t have chemical intuition. Finally, I will briefly discuss this research in the context of the broader emerging area of “Chemical Engineering Data Science”.

Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering Graduate Seminar Series

The Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering is hosting a seminar presented by Gyeong Hwang, Paul D. and Betty Meek & American Petrofina Foundation Centennial Professor, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, April 2, at 4:10 p.m. in ADBF 1002/FLOYD 256 (Tri-Cities).

Dr. Hwang is the Paul D. and Betty Robertson Meek and American Petrofina Foundation Centennial Professor in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin).  He received his BS (1991) and MS (1993) from Seoul National University, Korea, and his PhD (1999, with MS in Applied Physics) from California Institute of Technology (Caltech), all in Chemical Engineering. He also carried out post-doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (1999) and Caltech (2000-2001). Since joining UT-Austin as an Assistant Professor in 2001, Dr. Hwang has developed his research program in computational materials and chemical science. He has been involved in many top-notch research projects concerning the electrochemical properties and performance of nanomaterials and molecular systems for energy, electronics and environment. Dr. Hwang has published more than 180 articles in high-impact journals. He has given more than 130 presentations as an invited speaker, including plenary and keynote addresses at international conferences. His professional career has been recognized with multiple prestigious awards and honors, including KSEA Engineer of the Year Award, NSF CAREER Award, and ECS F.M. Becket Memorial Award.

Accelerating Materials Discovery and Design through Computation

The discovery and design of new materials has long played a key role in enabling technological advances across a wide range of industries. Over recent years, a variety of nanomaterials have been synthesized and tested as promising catalysts especially for clean and renewable energy applications. However, in many cases, little is known about their properties and performance, despite the criticality of such a fundamental understanding for the accelerated development of new catalytic materials. Experiments may provide many clues to the behavior of those materials, but the interpretations are often controversial due largely to the difficulty of direct characterization. Under such circumstances, computational approaches have emerged as powerful alternatives to the design and understanding of new materials and processes. This talk will focus on introducing our ongoing efforts in first-principles modeling of nanomaterials for catalysis.  In the first part of my talk, I will present recent progress in our collaborative theoretical and experimental efforts to explore photocatalysts with the requisite band gaps, stability, costs, and abundance for solar-powered hydrogen production. In particular, this talk will highlight the effects of crystal structure and doping on the photocatalytic performance of BiVO4 that has recently garnered considerable attention due to its high photocatalytic activity for water splitting and pollutant decomposition. In the second part, I will discuss design strategies to improve the performance of carbon nanomaterials for use as oxygen reduction reaction catalysts in fuel cells and gold-based bimetallic catalysts for the direct synthesis of hydrogen peroxide.