November 29, 2023
Victor Zavala – University of Wisconsin - Madison
October 12, 2022
Kathryn Whitehead – Carnegie Mellon University
October 15, 2019
Yuriy Román-Leshkov – MIT
November 13, 2018
Lydia Contreras – University of Texas-Austin
February 15, 2018
V. Faye McNeill – Columbia University
October 25, 2016
Jeffrey Rimer – University of Houston
In 2015, Duncan & Suzanne Mellichamp generously endowed a new lecture series in the Department of Chemical Engineering to highlight up and coming Chemical Engineers. The Mellichamp Emerging Leader Lecture features up and coming researchers in a wide variety of Chemical Engineering disciplines supported by the generous endowment.
Duncan Mellichamp was a founding member of the UCSB Chemical Engineering Department faculty, starting the process dynamics and control programs in 1966-67. He earned his B.S. degree from Georgia Tech, and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue. Mellichamp is author of more than 100 research publications. He co-wrote the award-winning undergraduate textbook, “Process Dynamics and Control” in 1989, now appearing in its 4th ed. He edited “Real-Time Computing with Applications to Data Acquisition and Control” in 1983.
OCTOBER 29, 2023 |
Victor ZavalaAssociate Professor of Chemical Engineering
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OCTOBER 12, 2022 |
Kathryn WhiteheadProfessor of Chemical Engineering
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OCTOBER 15, 2019 |
Yuriy Román-Leshkov
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November 13, 2018 |
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Lydia Contreras
BIO: Prof. Contreras is a member of the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas-Austin. She teaches Thermodynamics, Introduction to Chemical Engineering Analysis, and Fundamental and Applications of Cellular Regulation. Dr. Contreras obtained a B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University, where she graduated Cum Laude. She completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University, focusing on engineering bacterial cells for improved production of therapeutic proteins. As a postdoctoral associate at the Wadsworth Center (New York State Department of Health), she focused on understanding mechanisms of infection in pathogenic bacteria. She began her career at the University of Texas-Austin in 2011, where she leads a research team focused on RNA biochemistry to study gene regulation mechanisms associated with stress-responses for applications in health and biotechnology. She has received several academic, teaching and service awards including: Department of Thrust Reduction Agency (DTRA) Young Investigator, Airforce Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator, NSF CAREER, Health and Environmental Institute (HEI) Walter E. Rosenblith New Investigator, Norman Hackerman Advanced Research Program (NHARP) Early Career, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) Young Investigator Award, and an Innovative Early-Career Frontiers of Engineering Educator. TITLE: Understanding and Engineering RNAs for Programmable Gene Control ABSTRACT: Regulatory RNAs enable bacteria to dynamically respond to stresses caused by changes in environmental conditions. Specifically, bacterial small RNAs, a class of RNA regulators, exert dynamic control on complex networks by regulating gene expression. Understanding their functions is a goal in both medicine and metabolic engineering given their relevance to pathogenesis and their potential to manage global regulatory networks that affect biological production of industrially-relevant compounds. Given the importance of molecular structure to RNA functioning, fundamental sRNA characterization and applied engineering efforts depend heavily on the understanding and design of their specific shapes. Specifically, knowledge of the RNA structural landscape supports identification of interfaces relevant to regulation. In this talk, we will describe the development of a high throughput tool that allows for the simultaneous in vivo characterization of thousands of potential interacting interfaces in RNA molecules, as determined based on their molecular accessibility. We will describe how RNA structural insights obtained from this synthetic probing approach can be used in the functional characterization of newly discovered RNAs and in the rational design of bacterial sRNAs to achieve a tunable gradient of global control for metabolic engineering applications. |
February 15, 2018 |
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V. Faye McNeill
BIO: Prof. McNeill is the Chair of the Undergraduate Committee Columbia University. She joined Columbia in 2007 and received tenure in 2014. She received her B.S. in Ch.E. from Caltech in 1999 and her PhD in Ch.E. from MIT in 2005, where she was a NASA Earth System Science Fellow. From 2005-2007 she was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington Department of Atmospheric Sciences. She received the NSF CAREER and the ACS Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator awards in 2009. She was the recipient of the Kenneth T. Whitby Award of AAAR in 2015. She is the Associate Editor in charge of Atmospheric Chemistry for ACS Earth and Space Chemistry. She was a co-editor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics from 2007-2017. She has served in multiple elected officer positions in AIChE, AAAR, and AGU. She is an appointed member of the IUPAC panel on kinetic data evaluation and the ACS Committee on Environmental Improvement. TITLE: Aqueous Atmospheric Chemistry: From the Molecular to the Regional and Global Scales ABSTRACT: Aqueous chemical processes occurring in cloud droplets and wet atmospheric particles are an important source of organic and inorganic atmospheric particulate matter. Despite considerable progress, mechanistic understanding of some key aqueous processes is still lacking, and representation of these processes is incomplete in most regional and global models. I will review the state of the science and discuss my group’s efforts in characterizing these processes in the laboratory, modeling them in detail on the molecular level, and model reduction to include essential processes in large-scale models. |
October 25, 2016 |
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Jeffrey Rimer
BIO: Prof. Rimer received B.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis and Allegheny College, respectively. In 2006, he received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware. Prior to joining the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Houston in 2009, he spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at New York University’s Molecular Design Institute within the Department of Chemistry. Jeff’s research in the area of crystal engineering focuses on the rational design of materials with specific applications in the synthesis of microporous catalysts and adsorbents, and the development of therapeutics to inhibit crystal formation in pathological diseases. His work has been featured in high impact journals such as Science and Nature, among others. Jeff has also received numerous awards, including a Welch Foundation fellowship, the ACS Doctoral New Investigator Award, and the NSF CAREER Award. Recently, he was selected for the 2016 Owens Corning Early Career Award by AIChE. He has also been the recipient of several research and teaching awards, including the Junior Faculty Research Excellence Award from the Cullen College of Engineering, the Excellence in Research and Scholarship and the Early Faculty Award for Mentoring Undergraduate Research from the University of Houston, and Teaching Excellence Awards at both the University and College level. Jeff serves as chair of the Southwest Catalysis Society, vice chair of the International Zeolite Association Synthesis Commission, chair elect for the Gordon Research Conference on Crystal Growth and Assembly, and he is an advisory board member for the journal Reaction Chemistry & Engineering. TITLE: Identifying New Paradigms in Crystal Engineering for Energy and Biomedical Applications ABSTRACT: Crystal engineering is a broad area of research that focuses on methods of designing and/or optimizing materials for diverse applications in fields spanning from energy to medicine. The ability to selectively control crystallization to achieve desired material properties requires detailed understandings of the thermodynamic and kinetic factors regulating crystal nucleation and growth. Combining this fundamental knowledge with innovative approaches to tailor crystal size, structure, and morphology can lead to the production of materials with superior properties beyond what is achievable by conventional routes. In this talk I will discuss two general mechanisms of crystal growth: (1) classical pathways involving 2-dimensional layer nucleation and advancement on crystal surfaces through monomer addition; and (2) nonclassical pathways, termed crystallization by particle attachment (CPA), involving the formation of metastable precursors that play a direct role in crystal nucleation and growth. Our group uses techniques such as atomic force microscopy (AFM) to investigate crystallization in situ under solvothermal conditions. We have developed a unique AFM system capable of capturing time-resolved dynamics of surface growth, thus opening new routes to probe complex pathways of crystallization. We also design “modifiers” to control crystal properties such as size and morphology. Modifiers are molecules or macromolecules that interact with specific surfaces of crystals and regulate anisotropic growth rates. In this talk, I will show how we use growth modifiers to control crystallization in two distinctly different, yet fundamentally similar, applications. In the first part of my talk I will discuss our work on the development of therapeutic drugs for crystals implicated in two pathological diseases: kidney stones (calcium oxalate monohydrate) and malaria (hematin). In the second part of my talk, I will discuss how we are using modifiers as a bio-inspired approach to tailor the properties of zeolites, which are microporous aluminosilicates commercially used in catalysis, adsorption, and ion-exchange processes. Topics that will be addressed include the broader challenges of synthesizing zeolites, progress towards elucidating their complex mechanism(s) of growth, and extensive effort to develop commercially-viable approaches to tailor their physicochemical properties. |