che newsletter designing · 3074 h. h. dow building 2300 hayward street ann arbor, mi 48109 (734)...

ChE Newsletter[6]

Sharon C. Glotzer elected to the National Academy of Engineering[Page 4]

D e s i g n i n g E c o - F r i e n d l y D i a p e r s

FROM THE CHAIR

IN THIS ISSUE

8|

12|

18|

20|

25|

27|

10 | Process Safety Across the Curriculum

13 | Nanofibers Inspired by Geckos

RESEARCHHIGHLIGHTS

FACULTYHONORS

ALUMNION CAMPUS

ALUMNIPROFILES

GIFTS

ALUMNINEWS

23 | Alumni Defends Tom Brady

CHEMICAL ENGINEERINGUniversity of Michigan3074 H. H. Dow Building2300 Hayward StreetAnn Arbor, MI 48109

(734) [email protected]

engin.umich.edu/che

DEPARTMENT CHAIRSharon C. Glotzer

NEWSLETTER STAFFSandra G. Swisher Heather GuentherChemical Engineering

DESIGNERMira LancasterCollege of Engineering

The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity and Title IX/Section 504/ADA Coordinator, Office for Institutional Equity, 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1432, (734) 763-0235, TTY (734) 647-1388. For other University of Michigan information call (734) 764-1817.

REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGANJordan B. Acker, Michael J. Behm, Mark J. Bernstein, Paul W. Brown, Shauna Ryder Diggs, Denise Ilitch, Ron Weiser, Katherine E. White, Mark S. Schlissel, ex officio

© 2019 Regents of the University of Michigan

6 | Thompson New Dean at Delaware

University of Michigan - Chemical Engineering

2

These past two years in my now not-so-new role as Chair of Michigan Chemical Engineering have taken me coast to coast, and to several states in between, to

meet with members of our vibrant and robust alumni network. Each conversation has revealed new dimensions of our ChE community, and proved that the spaces separating us are no match for the bonds connecting us.

That’s not to say that space does not impose a unique set of challenges, particularly for our ChE students and faculty who are learning and teaching across fragmented facilities. Luckily, solving complex problems is what we chemical engineers do best.

Our outstanding Michigan ChE community—from our undergraduate and graduate students to our faculty and alumni—is engineering innovative ways to continue our excellence in the decades ahead.

Our research ingenuity is a continuing core foundation of Michigan ChE. Our students and faculty are engineering matter across scales, from molecules and materials to micromachines and medicines. We’ve developed a prototype “wearable” device that can continuously collect live cancer cells directly from a patient’s blood, which could help to diagnose and treat cancer more effectively.

We’ve engineered a new, innovative approach to 3D printing that can create complex shapes nearly 100 times faster than conventional 3D printers. We engineered a

new material—a transparent silica aerogel insulator—that can more efficiently reduce the amount of heat lost when capturing solar thermal energy.

We demonstrated that inexpensive, chiral nanoparticles in a gel and placed near a magnet has great potential for 3-D displays and real-time holography. We engineered a new technique for mimicking biological nanofiber arrays that can grow chain-like molecules into 3D nanostructures.

Yet our innovation does not begin and end with our research endeavors. We’re training the next generation of chemical engineers who will help redefine the boundaries of our field. To continue and accelerate that work, we’re developing new infrastructure—including new institutes, programs, and courses—that provide our Leaders & Best with the leading scientific tools and spaces.

Michigan Chemical Engineering is a decorated department, as evidenced by the student and faculty honors you’ll read about in the following pages. These outstanding recognitions validate our work, but they are not what drives us. We simply can’t stop ourselves from using our knowledge and skills to improve the world around us.

Thank you to our alumni and friends. We would not be where we are today without each of you and your countless contributions to our department. I look forward to meeting more of you in the coming year.

Sharon C. Glotzer, Anthony C. Lembke Department Chair

Sharon is also the John Werner Cahn Distinguished University Professor of Engineering and the Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering.

NOTE FROM THE CHAIR

NEW RACKHAM DEANMichael Solomon has been appointed dean of the University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School and vice provost for academic affairs-graduate studies. Solomon served as interim dean and vice provost since August 2017, and was associate dean for academic programs and initiatives at Rackham from 2013 to 2017.

“Professor Solomon brings a diplomatic and collaborative approach to the work of the Rackham dean and vice provost roles. He will build on Rackham Graduate School’s national leadership in degree completion and diversity to innovate in ways that combine interdisciplinary education, experiential learning, and an expanded range of career opportunities in both master’s and doctoral education,” says U-M Provost Martin Philbert in recommending Solomon for the position.

As interim dean, Solomon generated new giving that received the Bicentennial Match of the Victors for Michigan Campaign to support graduate education and students. He reconnected and engaged with the graduate school’s partners on campus; created systems

within Rackham to advance new ideas and initiatives; and invested in the diversity, equity, and inclusion of Rackham students and staff.

As interim vice provost for academic affairs – graduate studies, Solomon collaborated across campus to create a supportive climate for graduate students, to engage the graduate student community around its values of free inquiry and intellectual exchange, and to address funding of doctoral education.

Focus on Professor SolomonMike Solomon has taken on a new full-time job at Rackham that will limit his hours in NCRC but he will continue to conduct research with his students and to support the department. He realizes he will be looking for creative ways to fit more activities into his daily schedule as many others do. What’s more, he also has to find time on his calendar for the chauffeuring duties he shares with his wife, Dr. Ellen Lee, to transport their daughters, Zoe, a 15-year-old sophomore at Huron, and 13-year-old Mia, an 8th grader at Tappan, to their many activities.

He looks forward to continuing his soft matter research with Dr. Scott VanEpps, from the Department of Emergency Medicine, to explore the biomechanical properties of

bacterial biofilms to help prevent infection in implanted medical devices. He is also working with his students on self-assembly as they to try to understand coloration in materials, especially biologically inspired coloration. Living systems make use of a phenomenon called structural color, so named because this coloration arises from the placement of microscopic building blocks in precise configurations. It’s the iridescent color that we see in organisms like butterflies, and it’s something that Solomon hopes to understand and use in artificial materials.

He has long recognized how important graduate education is to our country. He feels that working at Rackham to help the University improve graduate training is a

natural direction for him to go in at this time in his career.

As Dean of Rackham, one of his duties is to encourage more collaborations between the many schools and colleges. He believes that his research interests in chemical engineering have helped make him a good fit for Rackham. He has participated in several interdisciplinary research projects so he has experience with successful collaborations with his medical school and science colleagues.

Solomon says, “The way that engineering faculty work with their graduate students can be very different from how professors in other schools interact with their students.

FACULTY NEWS

“I am honored by the opportunity to lead Rackham Graduate School as it pursues its aim for excellence in graduate education in collaboration with faculty, students, staff, and alumni,” Solomon says. “The vibrancy of

Continued on page 5

Continued on page 5

engin.umich.edu/che 3

Sharon C. Glotzer, the Anthony C. Lembke Department Chair of Chemical Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS), Glotzer is internationally recognized for her foundational research into the self-assembly of nanoparticles.

Among her engineering accomplishments, the NAE notes her “development of computer-based design principles for assembly engineering and manufacturing of advanced materials and nanotechnology.” Glotzer is one of 86 members in the newly elected class, which also includes Alec Gallimore, the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering, and Nadine B. Sarter, professor of industrial and operations engineering. Glotzer joins two other Michigan chemical engineers—Ronald Larson and Ralph T. Yang—in the prestigious Academy.

Alumnus Jeff Lievense (BSE ’76), senior adviser to the chief executive officer, bioengineering and technology, Genomatica Inc., in San Diego was also elected to the NAE this year for his leadership in biomanufacturing of sustainable chemicals.

NAE membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

Since joining the Michigan Chemical Engineering Department in 2001, Glotzer has served as a key architect behind several department, college and campus initiatives. Her expertise in the growing field of computational materials science led her to establish two new graduate courses at U-M: Computational Nanoscience of Soft Matter (ChE/MSE 557) and Assembly Engineering (ChE 696).

Harnessing her leadership and management skills, Glotzer has assembled an exceptionally large research group that produced some of the first design rules for self-assembling nanoparticles. She also helped lead the College of Engineering and campus in building U-M’s computational research infrastructure, now Advanced Research Computing. Glotzer’s research interests include: the ability to manipulate matter at the molecular, nanoparticle, and colloidal level to create “designer” structures; the fundamental principles of how nanoscale systems of building blocks self-assemble; and controlling the assembly process to engineer new materials.

Glotzer and the NAE Class of 2019 will be formally inducted during a ceremony at the NAE’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on October 6, 2019.

In addition to her role as chair of Chemical Engineering, Glotzer is also the John Werner Cahn Distinguished University Professor of Engineering and the Stuart W. Churchill Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering. She is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Macromolecular Science and Engineering, Physics, and Applied Physics. ChE

FACULTY NEWS

Glotzer Elected to NAE

Glotzer joins two other faculty from the department in the Academy —Ron Larson and Ralph Yang.

University of Michigan - Chemical Engineering4

In Memorium: Rane CurlProfessor Emeritus Rane Curl passed away on Sunday, May 12, 2019. He received all his degrees in chemical engineering from MIT. He worked for Shell Development Company from 1955 to 1961 and taught at both the University College London and Technische Hogeschool Einhoven in the Netherlands before coming to the University of Michigan as an associate professor in 1964.

As a faculty member, he particularly enjoyed teaching and improving the undergraduate laboratory courses, which are important transitions for the students from academic study to practical applications. First in our junior lab, ChE 360, where uncertainty analysis is also taught, he developed the algorithm for UNCANAL, a program for calculating total uncertainties in computed quantities derived from several different measured values. This shifted the laboratory work away from the sometimes grueling derivations of the uncertainty relations to a focus on minimizing the actual errors.

Many alumni will remember Professor Curl from the senior laboratory class, ChE 460. In the 1980s, Curl introduced major changes to the senior laboratory course including creating “Brown Industries” named

after the late George Granger Brown, with a new emphasis on simulating real problems in the experiments, in addition to increasing the prominence of laboratory safety and environmental protection in the course.

Until recently, Curl had lunch on Fridays with Professors Jim Wilkes and Scott Fogler, as well as retired department engineer Pablo LaValle at the original Knight’s Steak House on the west side of Ann Arbor.

The full article will appear in the next newsletter and is currently available at https://che.engin.umich.edu

FACULTY NEWS

the research, scholarship, and educational activities of our university’s graduate programs and students is central to our national leadership and contribution to the public good.”

His research interests are in the area of complex fluids—soft materials with properties intermediate between fluids and solids. His research group has developed and applied 3-D confocal microscopy methods to study the soft matter phenomena of self-assembly, gelation, and the biomechanics of bacterial biofilms.

He is recognized for his excellence in education, developing new courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels related to process economics, polymers, colloids and nanoengineering. His awards include the U-M Henry Russel Award in 2003, the Rackham Faculty Recognition award in 2008 and the College of Engineering’s Education Excellence Award in 2010.

Solomon is passionate about graduate education because it enables students to dig into a problem over the course of years. “This kind of long view – the ability to work with an idea for a long time – is really a competitive advantage that not many other kinds of training offer,” he said. ChE

New Rackham Dean Continued from page 3

Focus on ProfessorSolomon Continued from page 3

I think there is much to be learned on all sides by making comparisons between the styles.”

Another goal will be to improve master’s programs across the University by broadening the range of program options and discovering ways to make it easier for students to finance their degrees. He says that continuing education is more important today than ever because professionals need to acquire new knowledge to stay current in their jobs and to pursue new career paths.

These goals have emerged as part of a process to create a new strategic plan for Rackham, a process which is already underway. Broadly speaking, Solomon says the larger goals of the plan pertain to enhancing the graduate-student experience at Michigan, bolstering diversity efforts, building partnerships and community, and strengthening Rackham’s culture and climate.

He says he will miss teaching ChE courses and getting to know the students. Solomon taught his ChE process economics course, ChE 485, until about two years ago, and many alumni will remember taking separations, ChE 343, with him. He says he was getting close to completing a course pack for that class before he set it aside to go to Rackham.

He also has taught graduate fluid dynamics, ChE 527, and introduced courses in polymer science and engineering, molecular engineering, scattering and optical methods for complex fluids, and nano and colloidal assembly.

“I am thrilled to take on this important work at Rackham with an eye toward finding new ways to enhance student success and catalyze new research in the field of graduate education,” Solomon says. “That said, I remain committed as ever to contributing to the Department of Chemical Engineering’s programs and the excellence of its teaching and research mission.” ChE


From an article by Kim Broekhuizen, University of Michigan Public Affairs

FACULTY NEWS

Levi T. Thompson was appointed dean of the University of Delaware’s College of Engineer-ing last fall.

“Though we are saddened to see him go af-ter 30 years on the faculty at Michigan, we are thrilled for Levi and his family in this exciting new chapter in their lives, and wish them the very best in their transition and beyond,” says Sharon Glotzer, Anthony C. Lembke Depart-ment Chair of Chemical Engineering.

Thompson received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at the University of Delaware. He went on to earn two master’s degrees from the University of Michigan in chemical engineering and nuclear engineering, as well as his doctorate in chemical engineer-ing.

Thompson joined the department as an assistant professor in 1988 and has been the Richard E. Balzhiser Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engi-neering since 2005. He is also a profes-sor of mechanical engineering. He served as associate dean for under-graduate education in the College of Engineering from 2001 through 2005, during which the College experienced significant increas-es in diversity, student retention and undergraduate enrollment, as well as an improved ranking.

He was director of the Hydrogen Energy Technology Laboratory and director of the Michigan-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation. He has received numerous awards, including the University of Delaware Outstanding Alumnus award in 2006, a Michiganian of the Year award in 2006, an Engineering Society of Detroit Gold Award in 2007, the NSF Presidential Young Investigator award in 1991, and the Dow Chemical Good Teaching award in 1990.

A constant in his career as an educator has been his efforts to enhance the educa-

THOMPSON NEW DEAN AT DELAWARE

Thompson was appointed dean of the University of Delaware’s College of Engineering and was also named as the Elizabeth Inez Kelley Professor of Chemical Engineering, with tenure, in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

sense of humor, along with a passion for the mission of the University. Levi shows the talent and grace to be highly successful in endeavors at any level, and I expect him to be a very successful Dean of Engineering.”

In a note to his friends and colleagues at Michigan, Thompson writes: “My career as a chemical engineer started as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware but I grew into my profession at the University of Michigan as a graduate student, and later as a faculty member.

I met my wife of 30+ years here, our daugh-ters were raised in Ann Arbor, and my young-est daughter is a rising senior at Michigan. The deep roots I have at the University and in the surrounding community form important parts of my foundation both personally and professionally.

It’s impossible to thank everyone that I should, but I want to first acknowledge all of my students, both graduate and un-dergraduate. I also want to thank a few colleagues without whom I would not be here; I thank Erdogan Gulari for his part in ad-mitting me to the graduate program, Johannes Schwank for mentoring me during my graduate studies and Scott Fogler, who took a chance and hired me as an assistant professor.

This is a bitter-sweet moment, as

I’m excited about the opportunity to help lead University of Delaware Engineering, I know I will also miss my friends and colleagues at Michigan Engineering. Thank you all for making the last 30+ years so wonderful. Go Blue!!” ChE

The University of Delaware Office of Communications and Marketing contributed to this story

tional environment for students, particularly underrepresented minority (URM) students. He has worked to increase the enrollment and improve the climate in higher education for them, initially by helping them to realize that there are other people who look like them who are doing what they want to do. “I think Michigan has made tremendous progress in their efforts to make minority students feel more comfortable,” Thompson says.

Colleague Erdogan Gulari says, “Levi is a mentor extraordinaire, he produced scholars from very raw material and was the most effec-tive and dedicated leader in bringing diversity to our student body.”

He is still in regular contact with most of his former graduate students. One of them, Jim Waldecker, says he is proud to be one of Thompson’s students and remembers when he

had him for an undergraduate class. “While trying to argue back points on the 486 final, I made mention of the fact that he had just given me my first (and eventually, my only) grade below A- during my undergrad years, at which point Levi asked if I wanted to do research in his lab that summer. I did research for Levi that summer and eventually joined his group as a graduate student.”

Former department chair, Ron Larson, remarks, “Levi has been a wonderful colleague in the ChE department, showing a trademark


FACULTY NEWS

Weber passed away on October 18, 2018. During his tenure at the University of Michigan, he taught in both the Civil and Environmental Engineering and Chemical Engineering Departments.

Walter J. Weber, Jr. was born on June 16, 1934, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He obtained a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from Brown University in 1956. In 1959, he earned a master’s degree in civil engineering from Rutgers University, followed by a PhD in water resources engineering from Harvard University in 1962.

In 1963, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan as a professor in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Chemical Engineering. At that time, public concern about

Walter J. Weber, 1934-2018contamination of natural waters was growing. Just two years earlier, President John F. Kennedy delivered a special address to Congress calling for new technologies to treat and reuse wastewater as a way to counteract increasing demands on the world’s fresh water supply. Weber was in the vanguard of researchers who embraced this idea of water reclamation. His passion for water purification and sustainability would shape his career and bring him to the forefront of his field.

In his 46 years at the University of Michigan, Weber made countless contributions to the University and the field of environmental engineering. In 1968, he founded what would become the nationally recognized Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Program in the College of Engineering. He helped found and chair the University Cross-Disciplinary Degree Program in Water Resources Engineering, Sciences, and Management, as well as three other centers for hazardous substances, environmental sciences and technology, and bioremediation.

Later in his career at U-M, Weber moved to the Chemical Engineering Department full time. His arrival in Chemical Engineering called the department’s attention to research and teaching at the “energy-water nexus,” said Ronald G. Larson.

Weber’s prescient prediction of an approaching wave of formidable global energy-water challenges—and the role of research in

understanding the complicated interplay between the two finite resources—made him instrumental in strengthening the department’s energy-water efforts.

“Walt’s presence will be missed, but his impact is enduring,” said Larson, who served as the department chair when Walt came to Chemical Engineering. “I have fond memories of working with Walt, and have seen his impact on the discipline world-wide in numerous ways.”

Weber’s extensive list of honors and awards includes several notable highlights: elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (1985); named the Gordon M. Fair and Earnest Boyce Distinguished University Professor of Environmental and Ecological Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan (1994); honored by the American Chemical Society for leadership and contributions to the field of environmental science and engineering with a three-day national colloquium (2003); chosen as one of the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era” by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers for his lifetime of work in the area of environmental process dynamics & system sustainability (2008). ChE

From an article by Jessica Petras, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering


On February 19, chemical engineering undergraduate students filled the North Campus Research Complex (NCRC) dining hall to showcase their work in research labs within the department and across the university.

At the first Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Research Symposium, 13 undergraduates presented research posters and answered questions from faculty, graduate students and fellow undergraduate students.

An observation, made months earlier, became the event’s catalyst. As chemical engineering lecturers Drs. Saadet Albayrak-

Guralp and Laura Hirshfield conducted interviews about the department’s current undergraduate curriculum, a common theme emerged: ChE undergraduate students had fewer opportunities to connect and interact with faculty members, yet many conducted research within faculty labs.

The event became a way to unite the entire ChE community and give the undergraduates a stage in which to share their work.

Event organizers include: Albayrak-Guralp; the Omega Chi Epsilon Honor Society; and graduate students Alison Banka, Emma Purcell, and Kaylee Smith.

First Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium

Emma Purcell, graduate student and Jessica Jana, senior. Jana worked in the Nagrath lab.

ttt

Lola Eniola-Adefeso received a University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School Faculty Recognition Award for outstanding achievements in scholarly research and creative endeavors, excellence in teaching, advising and mentoring, and distinguished participation in service activities.

The second edition of Scott Fogler’s textbook, Essentials of Chemical Reaction Engineering, published in 2018, incorporates Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) in the Living Example Problems (LEPs). LEPs allow the students to use software such as Polymath, Matlab and Wolfram to rework the example problems using the students’ or professors’ own numbers. In the Wolfram LEPs, the students explore the problems using sliders to vary the parameters of the simulation of a chemical reactor and reaction.

Sharon Glotzer is the 2018 Nanoscale Science & Engineering Forum (NSEF) Award Winner. She presented the 2018 NSEF Forum Plenary entitled “Nano 2.0: From Discovery to Design” at the 2018 AIChE Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.

Eshita Khera, a member of the Thurber group, won a Tau Beta Pi Fellowship.

Shannon Moran, a mentor for LGBTQ engineering students at the University of Michigan and the architect behind several inclusive programs across campus and the United States, won a MLK Spirit Award for her inclusivity efforts. She is a member of the Glotzer group.

FACULTY HONORS

STUDENT AWARDS

Sunitha Nagrath is the winner of the 2018 Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award. The award recognizes her creation of an “interdisciplinary program at the interface of measurement science, engineering, biology, and medicine and her significant contributions to rare cell detection and isolation.” She also invented a microfluidic maze-on-a-chip that detects and isolates cancer tumor cells from a single drop of blood, which is now in clinical breast cancer trials.

Andy Tadd, a lecturer in the department, is the College of Engineering’s 2017-18 Thomas M. Sawyer, Jr. Teaching Award recipient. The award honors non tenure-track faculty who have demonstrated sustained excellence in instruction and guidance at the undergraduate levels.

Peter Tessier was elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Levi Thompson was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). He was consulting editor for the AIChE Journal and served on the Chemical Engineering Technology Operating Council. He was also a member of the AIChE Board of Directors from 2014-2016.

Fei Wen was selected by the American Chemical Society’s Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research as one of the 29 most influential researchers in 2018 for her work on insect cells. These influential early-career researchers are selected on the basis of the quality and impact of their research.


ttt

Seven ChE students were named 2019 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship recipients in winter:

Zachary Berquist, second-year PhD student, Andrej Lenert’s lab; Emma Brannon, first-year PhD student, Lola Eniola-Adefeso’s lab; Margaret Braunreuther, undergraduate student; Salwan Butrus, undergraduate student; Misché Hubbard, first-year PhD student, Nick Kotov’s/Scott VanEpps’ (BME) labs;

Irina Kopyeva, undergraduate student; and Matthew Smith, first-year PhD student in Peter Tessier’s lab.

In addition, the following ChE students received honorable mentions:

Michael Veksler, undergraduate student, and James Wortman, first-year PhD student, Suljo Linic’s lab.

Congratulations to the University of Michigan AIChE Student Chapter, which accepted its ninth consecutive Outstanding Student Chapter Award. Chapter leaders also presented a conference-high three workshops, sharing its successes—and providing a blue print for other U.S. chapters—in building a robust mentorship program, corporate sponsorships, and fostering an international sister chapter relationship.

FACULTY HONORS

Ron Larson was recently awarded the American Physical Society 2019 Polymer Physics Prize, the highest honor in the field of polymer science.

The prize recognizes outstanding achievement in polymer science, and this year, recognizes Larson’s “wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary contributions to understanding the structure, dynamics, and rheology of polymeric materials in melt, solution, glassy, mesomorphic, and multi-phase states, including viscoelastic instabilities, constitutive equations, alignment transitions, and phase behavior.”

Larson’s research on complex fluids—substances such as polymers with an internal structure that gives them solid-like properties, but still permits liquid-like flow—are being

LARSON AND GLOTZER RECEIVE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY PRIZES

used to help in the development of safer medicines, and better paints and consumer products. Larson and his research team combine experimental, theoretical and computational components to better understand the relationship between a complex fluid’s structure and its rheological, or flow, properties. By discovering and harnessing this knowledge, Larson and his research team can better predict and alter the behavior of complex fluids.

The Polymer Physics Prize, now primarily supported by The Dow Chemical Company, was established in 1960 to recognize outstanding accomplishment and excellence of contributions in polymer physics research. ChE

Sharon Glotzer is the recipient of the American Physical Society (APS) 2019 Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics. The prize recognizes outstanding achievement in computational physics research specifically “for innovative molecular dynamics simulations of the self-assembly of variously shaped particles which opened up new directions in soft matter and materials science research.”

Professor Glotzer’s research uses fast supercomputers made from graphics processors to investigate how particles self-assemble in order to engineer new materials

and manipulate matter at the molecular and nanoparticle level to create novel structures. One contribution of Professor Glotzer and her research team is the idea of “patchy particles,” a conceptual approach to modeling, understanding and designing nanoparticles. This has led to a variety of investigations on self-organization and self-assembly.

The Rahman Prize was established in 1992 with support from IBM Corporation as a means of recognizing outstanding work and disseminating information in computational physics. ChE


KOTOV RECEIVES TWO NOTABLE AWARDS

Kotov was awarded the 2018 Soft Matter & Biophysical Chemistry Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry, recognizing his foundational research on chiral inorganic nanoparticles, which includes demonstrating that nanoparticles based on inexpensive cobalt oxide—a white-colored, magnetic semiconductor—could be used to control twisted light well using magnetic fields.

Additionally, he became one of 11 faculty scientists and engineers nationwide selected for the 2018 class of Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellows, joining a cadre of only 45 current Faculty Fellows.

Kotov’s fellowship project will focus on establishing a comprehensive framework of synthetic methods, computational tools, characteristic properties, and translational targets for the hierarchical engineering of chiral ceramics with nanoparticles as their basic engineering blocks.

He joins Sharon Glotzer as Michigan chemical engineering’s recipients of the prestigious award. Glotzer was a member of the 2009 class of Faculty Fellows, which until 2016, was known as the National Security Science & Engineering Faculty Fellowship.

Established in 2008, the fellowship program seeks outstanding researchers to conduct transformative basic research in topic

areas of interest to the DoD over the course of the 5-year fellowship with up to $3 million in funding.

Kotov studies chemistry on the nanoscale and explores how the building blocks of living organisms compare to non-biological nanostructures. This understanding of how biological machinery works, and how similar synthetic structures can be made, could one day help solve a multitude of technological problems. ChE

Nick Kotov received the Royal Society of Chemistry’s 2018 Soft Matter and Biophysical Chemistry Award and the U.S. Department of Defense’s 2018 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship for his foundational research on chiral inorganic nanoparticles.

FACULTY HONORS

NEW INITIATIVE BUILDS A “SAFETY MINDSET” INTO PROGRAM

On a scorching day in June 2005, grainy camera footage from Praxair’s former industrial gas facility in St. Louis, Mo. revealed clusters of upright compressed gas cylinders, each filled with highly flammable product. Seconds after a camera captures a subtle white gas escaping from one cylinder, a bright orange flame shoots skyward. Within minutes, thick black smoke begins obscuring the camera’s watchful eye.

More than a decade later, students enrolled in a ChE 330 thermodynamics course reviewed the chemical safety video of the Praxair incident and ran incident-specific calculations.

Their goal: Through careful review and calculations, to determine what combination of conditions and decisions sparked the incident and—if facing a similar scenario—how they could delay or prevent an explosion similar to the one that left Praxair’s facility engulfed in flames and a local neighborhood littered with metal debris.

The students’ task is a part of the Process Safety Across the Chemical Engineering Curriculum initiative developed by Scott Fogler.

Fogler, author of Elements of Chemical Reaction Engineering, the field’s dominant textbook, wants to help students develop a “sense of safety” by completing a safety module in every chemical engineering course and the curriculum.

“Sometimes chemical process safety is taught in a separate safety course within the core chemical engineering curriculum, and sometimes it is taught only in the senior year as a part of the process design course. In both scenarios, only a portion of students receive safety training,” Fogler says.

With wide variation in how—or if— chemical process safety is taught across the country, Fogler decided to develop

Scott Fogler launches safety initiative that integrates into existing chemical engineering curricula, builds a “safety mindset.”


XIAOXIA LIN, Systems and Synthetic Biology

JENNIFER J. LINDERMAN, Receptor Dynamics

SULJO LINIC, Catalysis, Surface Chemistry and Fuel Cells

HEATHER MAYES, Computing and Simulation, Sustainable Energy, Biomolecular Engineering

SUSAN M. MONTGOMERY, Chief Undergraduate Program Advisor

SUNITHA NAGRATH, BioMEMS in Cancer Diagnosis/Therapeutics, Cancer Cell Detection/Trafficking, and Microfluidics

ANDREW PUTNAM, Tissue Engineering and Mechanobiology

JOHANNES W. SCHWANK, Catalysts, Fuel Cells, and Fuel Conversion

TIMOTHY F. SCOTT, Photopolymers, Membranes, and Biomaterials

LONNIE SHEA, Regenerative Medicine, Immunomodulation, Systems Biology

MAX SHTEIN, Optoelectronic and Thermoelectric Materials, Devices, and Processing

NIRALA SINGH, Electrocatalysis, Flow Batteries, Wastewater Treatment

MARK A. BURNS, Microfluidics and Biochemical Analysis

OMOLOLA ENIOLA-ADEFESO, Cell Adhesion and Migration

H. SCOTT FOGLER, Flow and Reaction in Porous Media

SHARON C. GLOTZER, CHAIR, Compu-tational Assembly Science & Engineering, Machine Learning, Nanoscience

BRYAN GOLDSMITH, Catalysis, Materials, First-principles Modeling, Data Science and Machine Learning

ERDOGAN GULARI, DNA, Peptide Synthesis and Reactions at Interfaces

LAURA HIRSHFIELD, Instructor

JINSANG KIM, Smart Functional Polymers

NICHOLAS KOTOV, Nanomaterials, Biomaterials, Self-Organization Phenomena, and 3D Tissue Engineering

MARK J. KUSHNER, Plasma Chemistry, Medicine and Materials Processing

JOERG LAHANN, Biomaterials and Biointerfaces

RONALD G. LARSON, Complex Fluids and Biological Macromolecules

ANDREJ LENERT, Mesoscale Transport, Solar /Thermal Energy, Nanomaterials

Meet Our FacultyMICHAEL J. SOLOMON, Complex Fluids and Nanocolloids

ANDREW TADD, Lecturer

PETER M. TESSIER, Protein Design and Engineering, Therapeutics, Bionanotechnology

GREG M. THURBER, Quantitative Pharmacology and Molecular Imaging Agent Design

ANISH TUTEJA, Surface Science, Polymers, and Separations

ANGELA VIOLI, Multiscale Computational Nanoscience

HENRY Y. WANG, Bioprocess Engineering and Pharmaceutical Engineering

FEI WEN, Genetic Engineering, Directed Protein Evolution, and Immune Function Modulation

RALPH T. YANG, Separations and New Materials for Energy/Environmental Applications

ROBERT M. ZIFF, Nanostructures, Catalysis, and Modeling

CURRICULUM

NEW INITIATIVE BUILDS A “SAFETY MINDSET” INTO PROGRAMa resource for professors and students that could be integrated within an existing curriculum. Increased consistency in teaching chemical process safety can help safety, Fogler hopes, become an integral part of chemical engineering culture.

“By integrating safety into every course through a safety module, professors can help our students develop a safety mindset, whether they enter an academic or industrial lab,” says Fogler.

U-M undergraduate students who have completed a safety module as a part of a course have praised the efforts.

In an assessment, one student reflected that the module was “an interesting way to apply what we are learning in class to a real-world example.” ChE

• Watch a video created by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency that investigates the causes of chemical accidents, that simulates a real-world, course-specific incident and, if available, view the actual incident report.

• Complete a “safety algorithm,” which asks students to identify elements that led to the incident and what preventative actions might have helped prevent it.

• Carry out incident-related, course-specific calculations that help students quantify what went wrong leading up to the incident.

• Fill in the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) diamond for the chemical of interest in the video.

• Construct a BowTie diagram, a risk assessment tool that visualizes the path a hazard may take, for the incident in the video.

What are the components of a safety module?


Learn more about this initiative at http://umich.edu/~safeche/

RESEARCH

But surprisingly, the dogs who roamed the Americas before European colonists arrived in the 15th century and today’s modern canine companions share virtually no genetic background. Their closest remaining connection is a contagious, genital cancer called canine transmissible venereal tumors, or CTVT, which may have also wiped them out.

Technology developed by University of Michigan chemical engineers helped make this evolutionary discovery, published in Science, possible.

An evolving understanding of evolution

In 2006, Jean-Marie Rouillard, an assistant research scientist in chemical engineering, and Professor Erdogan Gulari co-founded Arbor Biosciences to pursue a better method for synthesizing DNA that they had developed in Gulari’s lab.

“In an academic lab, once you develop and publish your technology, it’s over. You can develop a great tool, but it’s useless if no one else can use it. We saw the importance of taking our technology to the next stage and using it to make a product that would fuel future discoveries,” says Rouillard, who currently serves as its chief scientific officer.

Among Arbor Biosciences’ first products was the tool that Rouillard’s team used to

capture DNA from 71 North American and Siberian archaeological dog remains used in the study on modern American dog evolution.

After thousands of years buried in the soil, collecting contaminants like fungal and bacterial DNA, the bones contained “only a small percentage of degraded dog DNA,” says Rouillard.

To extract what was left of the ancient dog DNA, Arbor Biosciences designed and manufactured DNA molecules that matched parts of the dog sequence. Using these “baits,” the researchers could then capture the dog DNA from the haystack of contaminants.

Beyond barnyard animal genomes

In one decade, the ability to trap and mass-sequence short, targeted DNA molecules went from a process only found in theory to reality.

Before this technology existed, research teams would have to sequence every molecule in a DNA sample—an expensive and, at times, infuriating process for scientists when only a few percent of these molecules are relevant to the study.

Since Rouillard and Gulari created Arbor Biosciences, their products have helped contribute to new understandings in evolution and domestication, including barnyard varieties of pigs, chickens and horses. But the technology’s application extends beyond farm animals, to prehistoric as well as fabled creatures.

One of Rouillard’s most memorable projects involved debunking alleged evidence of the yeti’s existence. A paleogeneticist sent the Arbor Biosciences team possible pieces of yeti hair, skin, tooth, bone and feces. Rouillard’s team captured and sequenced DNA from the samples, revealing that the specimens contained only dog or bear DNA, but nothing not yet known to science.

The older the sample, the more challenging it becomes to extract useful DNA samples. Rouillard once helped synthesize baits to capture DNA from a horse sample more than 700,000 years old, which is “about as hard as you can get.”

An unexpected career path

Rouillard estimates that Arbor Biosciences has provided an essential ingredient—from designing and creating baits to synthesizing DNA—in about two scientific papers published each week. “We have a strong relationship with the paleogenetic community,” says Rouillard.

It’s not the career pathway Rouillard envisioned when he joined Gulari’s lab 17 years ago. After receiving a doctoral degree in molecular genetics in 1998 in his native France, Rouillard came to Michigan Medicine in 2000 as a postdoctoral fellow, studying the newly sequenced human genome.That changed shortly after he heard Gulari discuss his lab’s work in 2001, when Rouillard recalls thinking, “I want to join his lab.” One month later, he did.Now as Arbor Biosciences prepares to celebrate its 12th anniversary this fall, Rouillard looks forward to ongoing and future collaborations with the paleogenetic community and beyond.

“It’s great,” Rouillard says. “Every day, customers come to us with new problems and we have the tools that we can adapt to help serve their need. This is why Arbor Biosciences exists—to provide tools that scientists need.” ChE

Around 15,000 years ago, man’s best friend followed humans—most likely from Siberia—into North America, according to new findings from an international team of researchers. They discovered the true evolutionary history of American dogs, debunking the belief that the continent’s earliest dogs descended from North American wolves.

REVEALING THE DEMISE OF NATIVE AMERICAN DOGS


NANOFIBERS WITH SOMEEXTRAORDINARY CHARACTERISTICS

RESEARCH

“This is so removed from anything I’ve ever seen that I would have thought it was impossible,” said Joerg Lahann, the senior author of the study in the journal Science.

Researchers at U-M and the University of Wisconsin-Madison made the somewhat serendipitous discovery, which revealed a new and powerful method for making arrays of fibers that are hundreds of times thinner than a human hair.

Polar bear hairs are structured to let light in while keeping heat from escaping. Water-repelling lotus leaves are coated with arrays of microscopic waxy tubules. And the nanoscale hairs on the bottoms of gravity-defying gecko feet get so close to other surfaces that atomic forces of attraction come

into play. Researchers looking to mimic these superpowers and more have needed a way to create the minuscule arrays that do the work.

“Fundamentally, this is a completely different way of making nanofiber arrays,” said Lahann.

The researchers have shown that their nanofibers repelled water like lotus leaves. They grew straight and curved fibers and tested how they stuck together like Velcro—finding that clockwise and counter-clockwise twisted fibers knitted together more tightly than two arrays of straight fibers.

They also experimented with optical properties, making a material that glowed. They believe it will be possible to make a

structure that works like polar bear fur, with individual fibers structured to channel light.

But molecular carpets weren’t the original plan. Lahann’s group was working with that of Nicholas Abbott, at the time a professor of chemical engineering at UW-Madison, to put thin films of chain-like molecules, called polymers, on top of liquid crystals. Liquid crystals are best known for their use in displays such as televisions and computer screens. They were trying to make sensors that could detect single molecules.

Lahann brought the expertise in producing thin films while Abbott led the design and production of the liquid crystals. In typical experiments, Lahann’s group evaporates single links in the chain and coaxes them to condense onto surfaces. But the thin polymer films sometimes didn’t materialize as expected.

“The discovery reinforces my view that the best advances in science and engineering occur when things don’t go as planned,” said Abbott. “You just have to be alert and view failed experiments as opportunities.”

Instead of coating the top of the liquid crystal, the links slipped into the fluid and connected with each other on the glass slide. The liquid crystal then guided the shapes of the nanofibers growing up from the bottom, creating nanoscale carpets.

“A liquid crystal is a relatively disordered fluid, yet it can template the formation of nanofibers with remarkably well-defined lengths and diameters,” Abbott observed.

And they didn’t only make straight strands. Depending on the liquid crystal, they could generate curved fibers, like microscopic bananas or staircases.

“We have a lot of control over the chemistry, the type of fibers, the architecture of the fibers and how we deposit them,” said Lahann. “This really adds a lot of complexity to the way we can engineer surfaces now; not just with thin two-dimensional films but in three dimensions.”

The research was supported by the Army Research Office. ChE

Written by Kate McAlpine, Marketing and Communications, College of Engineering

Inspired by the extraordinary characteristics of polar bear fur, lotus leaves and gecko feet, engineering researchers have developed a new way to make arrays of nanofibers that could bring us coatings that are sticky, repellant, insulating or light emitting, among other possibilities.

An electron microscope image of a three-dimensional network of twisted nanofibers templated with a liquid crystal. Credit: Kenneth Cheng, Lahann Lab, Michigan Engineering.


Two precursors for innovation are the ability to take risks and move quickly, but conventional research funding doesn’t offer that flexibility. A six-year-old program has radically changed the way new studies get funded at Michigan, and it’s now expanding to enable long-term investment in interdisciplinary collaboration.

Working with Alec Gallimore, presently the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering, and Thomas Zurbuchen, now an associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, ChE faculty member Mark Burns created Mcubed in 2012 to provide Michigan researchers with rapid funding—$15,000 or $60,000—so they could immediately start work.

Federal grants typically require one- to two-year investments in time before money is ever awarded—if it’s ever awarded. Universities, too, tend toward relatively safe bets when funding faculty research internally. The seed funding program Mcubed has created a third path at Michigan, enabling researchers to receive small grants with no formal peer review—just an interdisciplinary collaboration.

The plan was to stimulate research teams—“cubes” of three professors, who represent at least two different disciplines—to pursue ideas that might otherwise be too risky to be worth proposing for a conventional grant. The hope was that when faculty later applied for

more substantial grants, their early research results made possible by this seed grant would increase their chances of receiving funding for the next phase.

And it happened. The six-year investment of $30M by the University through Mcubed in 476 interdisciplinary projects has already translated into over $110 million from outside funding sources for faculty research. It has also led to more than 225 studies published in peer-reviewed journals, more than 60 additional products including companies, conference presentations, websites, and 16 invention reports.

Looking for better ways to produce antibiotics

One such successful venture began with a $60,000 Mcubed grant to Nick Kotov,

professor of Chemical Engineering, Angela Violi, professor of Mechanical Engineering and Chemical Engineering, and Scott VanEpps, an assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at Michigan Medicine, to see if they could discover new methods to create more effective antibiotics.

The team recently received an additional $3,409,811 last fall from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to continue their project to develop nanoparticles as a basis for the next generation of antimicrobials.

“The funding we received from Mcubed jump-started our team and allowed us to obtain the first critical results. It gave us focus and inspiration simultaneously,” Kotov says.

“The project stemmed from the observation of a series of biomimetic properties of nanoparticles made at the University of Michigan and other places. The ‘crazy’ hypothesis was that one can engineer inorganic nanoparticles to semi-selectively interact

RESEARCH

HOW MCUBED IS HELPING DERISK RESEARCH INVESTMENTS

Mark Burns, Executive Director of MCubed and Research Innovation in the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR).

“Mcubed is helping the University diversify by investing in many more faculty projects than the conventional funding of individual faculty.”

After getting a seed grant from Mcubed, Nick Kotov, Angela Violi, and Scott VanEpps have since received funding from DARPA and the Blue Sky Initiative.


New funding options

In addition to the current cube seed funding, Mcubed is adding two more options for this new cycle, Clusters and Themes, to help faculty organize advanced research at Michigan.

The Clusters program encourages faculty to form teams of experts who are in similar research areas although they may be in different departments. Researchers will be able to learn from each other, share equipment and space, and hone techniques. For instance, faculty working on microfluidics devices might join together to form a collaborative space for their work. These new teams automatically receive $2K to $10K to help the collaboration get up and running.

The Themes program will help faculty come together to expand research efforts to attack a particular problem. Again, they will form teams of researchers but this time their goal is to tackle a research challenge. For instance, engineers and medical researchers might wish to work on better methods to treat plaque buildup in the arteries of heart disease patients, or to find more effective methods of diagnosing pancreatic cancer. Again, researchers automatically receive $2K to $10K in seed money to start on their research efforts.

The Diamond program, created in 2014, permits alumni, industry, and foundations to be a part of Michigan’s $1.3 billion research enterprise by offering donors extraordinary access to direct U-M world-class researchers to study a particular area of interest. Members of the public can post challenges that they would like researchers to pursue. Faculty members then suggest approaches to tackle the problem, and the outside contributor can help select the lead investigator for the project. After that, the project proceeds as an ordinary cube, and the donor may interact with faculty throughout the process. The entry-level gift is $75,000 for alumni and friends, and $80,000 for corporate sponsorships.

15

with biological macromolecules. The early support for this hypothesis was initially found in shape-dependent inhibition of enzymatic activity by ZnO nanoparticles.”

Kotov says that the Mcubed funding made it possible for the team to transition from empirical testing of isolated cases to systematic engineering of the nanoparticles

using molecular dynamics methods pioneered by Angela Violi. At the same time, Scott VanEpps showed that the idea of inorganic nanoparticles semi-selectively interacting with biological molecules can make an immense difference to the health of millions of people if we start looking at biofilms of bacteria.

After working in a successful collaboration in these projects, Kotov, Violi, and VanEpps, and several other researchers from the University, recently received funding from the new Blue Sky initiative. Their new project is a departure from the Mcubed work because it presents a paradigm shift in the way the team approaches the development of nanobiotics, with the modeling component providing hypotheses on the synthesis of nanoparticles. Violi notes that “without this change, the process would be a hunt in the dark.”

This phase of the project, led by Angela Violi, will use machine learning, molecular simulations, and biological experiments to streamline the process of identifying promising nanoparticles and developing treatments with them to give doctors more options for treating patients in the future.

Next steps

Burns points out that Mcubed has proven far less risky than funding faculty members research individually. During the last five years, Mcubed has provided 1,500 researchers with seed money to start new research projects instead of making them go through the federal proposal process. When surveyed, 75 per cent of faculty who received Mcubed money say their projects would have never been funded without this

program. “There is never a guarantee that any of

the research will succeed,” says Burns, “but Mcubed is helping the University diversify by investing in many more faculty projects than the conventional funding of individual faculty.”

The third cycle of Mcubed opened for funding in fall 2018. In this cycle, U-M-Flint has joined U-M’s Ann Arbor and Dearborn campuses in being eligible for grants. The program is starting to catch on across the country: University of Virginia, Texas A&M, and Michigan State University have adopted similar programs—3 Cavaliers, T3, and WaterCube, respectively.

When Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health and former U-M faculty member, was the keynote speaker at the Mcubed’s third symposium in November 2017, he said that the interdisciplinary work

RESEARCH

>> If you would like more information on Mcubed, you can visit the website at mcubed.umich.edu

engin.umich.edu/che

encouraged by Mcubed aligns with the kinds of projects that NIH is interested in funding. He added, “The rest of the world has also been looking at this as a particularly innovative and creative way to start collaborations quickly.” ChE

Disposable diapers represent 3.5 million tons of landfill waste in the US alone, or roughly 2.5 percent of the total.

DESIGNING ECO-FRIENDLY DIAPERSA new company with an eye to making disposable diapers that aren’t immortalized in landfills has just closed its second round of seed funding—including $500,000 from the University of Michigan’s program to invest in its own startups.

The U-M graduate and faculty startup Ecovia Renewables grows thickeners and superabsorbent biomolecules with teams of microbes, resulting in materials that are safer and more environmentally friendly than conventional synthetic materials. The company has shown that its biodegradable material can compete with conventional disposable diaper absorbency in the lab, and it’s working with manufacturers to put the material into prototype diapers and other hygiene products.

Disposable diapers represent 3.5 million tons of landfill waste in the US alone, or roughly 2.5 percent of the total. Cloth diapers require a great deal of energy, water, detergent and time for parents—and they don’t hold as much liquid, making them harder on the skin of most babies.

“What everybody wants is an environmentally friendly option that still allows the level of convenience that you get with a conventional disposable,” said Jeremy Minty, co-founder and CEO of Ecovia Renewables—and a new dad. Minty

earned his undergraduate and doctorate degrees in chemical engineering at U-M in 2007 and 2013 respectively.

Compostable diapers could give us the best of both worlds, but they haven’t been widely adopted in part because the eco-friendly absorbent material isn’t as good as that found in regular disposables. Minty’s company may have an important piece of the solution.

The 4-year-old startup has demonstrated a new bio-based polymer that can absorb as much liquid as the sodium polyacrylate found in conventional disposable diapers. Equally important, it retains the liquid even under pressure, a necessary feature to prevent leaks when the baby’s weight rests on a wet diaper. But unlike sodium polyacrylate, it is biodegradable, eventually breaking down into the carbon dioxide from which it was made.

Disposable diapers cost families hundreds of dollars over the course of a year—around $400 for one child at the lower end to upwards of $800 for eco-friendly diapers. Xiaoxia “Nina” Lin, co-founder, scientific advisor and an associate professor of chemical engineering at U-M, notes research showing that people are willing to pay a premium of up to 30 percent for eco-friendly products. At full commercial production, the Ecovia team expects the cost of the bio-based absorber to be within 25 percent of sodium polyacrylate.

In the meantime, the company is starting off with higher-value applications, such as ingredients for premium cosmetics with eco-credibility. The base polymer, a chain-like molecule that the company is calling AzuraBase, traps water and releases it over time—one of the essential qualities of a

START UP

moisturizer. As people become more conscious about molecules that could potentially be absorbed into the skin, the bio-based polymer could be especially reassuring.

“It’s edible if someone wanted to actually eat this,” Minty observed with a chuckle. “It is made by microbes that live in soil and that are used in certain fermented foods.”

By linking parallel polymer chains together, Ecovia produces a gel known as AzuraGel, the bio-based superabsorbent molecule that could go into diapers. The polymer is already known to break down completely in soil, leaving nothing toxic behind, while the gel will complete compostability testing in the US early next year.

The polymer is produced in fermentation reactors. A team of bacteria and yeast turn a waste product such as glycerol, a byproduct of biodiesel production, into the polymer. Ecovia then purifies the polymer—removing the bacteria and yeast cells, leftover glycerol and any other contaminants.

The concept for the manufacturing process came out of Lin’s lab. While cellular engineering has often focused on designing a single microbe to do a job all on its own, Lin’s team tries to mimic the cooperation found in nature.

“Microbes live in diverse communities, working together to achieve something that any one alone cannot do,” she said. “The idea is to basically recruit specialists like in human society. By having each specialist do really well in their own job but also coordinating together, we can achieve something that is much bigger.”

In addition to providing first-round seed funding, Paris-based Seppic, Inc—which designs ingredients for health and beauty products—has partnered with Ecovia Renewables to develop ingredients for skincare products based on Ecovia’s microbial manufacturing.

For compostable diapers, Ecovia co-founder and chief business officer Drew Hertig says that once they find a business partner in hygiene, he anticipates another two to four years of product and market development. The polymer could also help soil retain moisture, reducing the amount of watering needed to keep crops and gardens healthy. ChE

From an article written by Kate McAlpine, Marketing and Communications, College of Engineering


JOHN J. McKETTA 1915 - 2019Professor John J. McKetta, Jr. passed away on January 15, 2019, at the age of 103 in Austin, TX. He was remembered in a memorial service on February 9, at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center in Austin, Texas.

McKetta received his PhD in 1946 from the University of Michigan, as well as an MS and

BSE degree in 1943 and 1944, respectively. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and in 2009, was selected by AIChE as one of the “50 Chemical Engineers of the Foundation Age.” He also served as president of AIChE in 1962.

After high school graduation in Pennsylvania, he started working at the local coal mine. In 1935, his brother gave him a book titled “Coal Carbonization” and he learned about engineers who made chemicals from coal. McKetta knew instantly that he wanted to do this rather than dig it. He set out to find a college where he could work and attend school. Tri-State College (now Trine University) in Indiana was the only college that offered him both opportunities so he headed there in fall 1935.

After graduation, he came to Michigan to work at Michigan Alkali in Wyandotte, now part of BASF. While working there, he heard that University of Michigan chemical engineering faculty were making chemicals from gas and petroleum. He drove to Ann Arbor in November 1941 to meet the faculty members; the chairman of department, “Great God” Brown (a nickname many students called G.G. Brown), and the “great” Donald L. Katz, who remained McKetta’s senior professor and dearest friend until his death in 1989. They suggested that he pursue a graduate degree at Michigan, so he agreed to enroll in the program for the winter term in 1942.

He joined the faculty of the University of Texas in 1946 after completing his PhD and later became an international authority on the thermodynamic properties of hydrocarbons and served as energy advisor to five presidents.

McKetta was honored by the University of Texas in 2012 when his department, with financial support from many of his former students, was renamed the John J. McKetta Jr. Department of Chemical Engineering.

This was not the first chemical engineering department named after him though. Fifteen years earlier, John McKetta’s undergraduate alma mater, Trine University, named their Chemical Engineering and Bioprocess Department after him too.

Read more about Professor McKetta at https://che.engin.umich.edu

Michael G. Brown and Barbara Brown Priest, grandchildren of George Granger Brown, former chair of the Chemical Engineering Department (1942-1951) and former dean of the College of Engineering (1951-1957), visited the North Campus building named after their grandfather on July 19, 2018.

They met with Ron Larson, George Granger Brown Professor and A.H. White Distinguished University Professor, and Jim Wilkes, who brought in his copy of “Unit Operations” by G. G. Brown and other faculty, including George Martin Brown, Michael and Barb’s father. George Martin Brown was on the faculty of Northwestern’s Chemical Engineering when the text was published in 1950.

Both of the grandchildren shared stories about their illustrious grandfather. Jim Wilkes presented them with a copy of his book, “A Century of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan,” and was able to answer many questions that they had about G.G. Brown’s colleagues. Before they left to travel to their cottage in the UP, we were able to get a picture of 3 generations of the Brown family in G.G. Brown Laboratories.

Last fall, great grandson Ed Hutchison, Michael and Barbara’s nephew, and his son, James, visited campus too. James is considering attending Michigan and Ann Arbor was a stop on his tour of campuses. Susan Montgomery, Chief Undergraduate Program Advisor, visited with father and son and talked to them about the undergraduate program at Michigan. ChE

<< From left to right are Brown’s grandchildren, Barbara Brown Priest and Michael Granger Brown; great grandchildren Arthur “AJ” Granger Brown and Cassie Priest Albergotti, and great-great grandson: Hen-ry Albergotti. In the front are his great-great grand-children Libby and Granger Albergotti.

>>Barbara Brown Priest, Ron Larson, the George Granger Brown Professor, and Michael Granger Brown in front of bronze sign honoring G.G. Brown

>>Susan Montgomery with James and Ed Hutchison.

G. G. Brown’s family visits campus

ALUMNI


Alumni come back to campus

Xplore Engineering, June 27 & 28, 2018

ALUMNI

From lower left corner, clockwise: Rebecca Rokos (BSE ’90) and her husband and their son, Martin Ralston.

Doug LaDue (BSE ’91) (right) with his father, Doug, and nephew, Brett.

Cheri Lantz (BSE ’97) and her son, Maxwell Maley.

John Burleson (BSE ’94) and his grandson, Justin Argue.

Last fall we welcomed over 40 alumni back to campus to celebrate homecoming at our homecoming luncheon in the Johnson Rooms in the Lurie Engineering Center. Rich Lesser (BSE ’83) was the recipient of the 2018 ChE Alumni Merit Award. He spoke at the ChE homecoming luncheon on October 5, where he was the guest of honor. Rich is the Chief Executive Officer of the firm Boston Consulting Group. Please see article on page 20 for more information about Rich Lesser.

From upper left corner, clockwise

Greg Sims (BSE ’78, MSE ’81).

John Carrier (BSE ’87), Ben Okwumabua (BSE ’72), Brian Mills (BSE ’76) and wife, and undergraduate student visitor.

Rich Lesser (BSE ’83) and Rhonda Germany Ballintyn (BSE ’79).

Rich Lesser (BSE ’83), ChE alumni award winner.

Alumni have the opportunity to bring their children, grandchildren or other relatives to campus every summer to learn more about engineering.

Homecoming Celebration October 5, 2018


SAVE THE DATE! 2019 Homecoming Weekend is October 4-5.

Pete and Sue Lederman (BSE ’53, PhD ’61), with Jan and Scott Fogler.

Department Reception October 29, 2018

ALUMNI

Alumni visit at AIChE National Meeting in Pittsburgh

Johannes Schwank with his former PhD student, Jim Yang Lee (BSE ’85).

Department lecturer, Karl Jacobs, and Rosemarie Wesson-Williams (PhD ’88).

Ali Mohraz (PhD ’94) and Lilian Hsiao (PhD ’14). Tammy Kinzer (PhD 05), Lola Eniola-Adefeso, Eranda Nikolla (PhD ’09), Bryan Gold-smith, Adam Holewinski (PhD ’13), and Abdoulaye Djire (PhD ’16).

Alex Demos (PhD ’93), Srinivas Palanki (PhD ’92), and Peter Valdéz (PhD ’13).

Erin Teich (PhD ’18), guest, Bob Ziff, Andrej Lenert, Mari Andiappan (PhD ’13), and Kevin Seibert (PhD ’96).

Prodromos Daoutidis (PhD ’91) and Costas Kravaris, former Michigan faculty member.


Rich Lesser (BSE ’83)

When it came time for Pittsburgh native and 2018 ChE Alumni Award recipient Rich Lesser to begin his college search, the University of Michigan quickly rose to the top of his list. With an interest in pursuing chemical engineering, Rich found that the Michigan’s robust chemical engineering department made the school a perfect fit. Rich was drawn to Ann Arbor and the University’s strong sense of community, as well as the strength and approachability of the faculty, commenting, “I really appreciated how so many of my teachers and mentors were accessible and down-to-earth in spite of their stature or other commitments.”

Rich arrived as a student in the fall of 1980 and was immediately enrolled in an entry ChE course (230) due to placement credits, but he says he had little understanding of what he was getting into. At the outset, the course proved incredibly challenging, so much so that he remembers calling home to share his concern that he wasn’t going to make it in chemical engineering. What Rich didn’t realize was that many other students were also struggling in the class because, at that time, it was purposefully a “weeder” class. Fortunately he soon began to catch on to the new material and ended up doing very well in it.

As someone who has always enjoyed solving hard problems, Rich found chemical engineering problems to be a welcome challenge and ultimately excelled through his lecture classes. The hands-on lab classes (e.g. ChE 360 and 460) were more of a struggle; as he puts it, “I was kind of a hazard around the equipment, including always breaking more than my ‘glass budget’ of tubes and beakers.” Nevertheless, he knew then that he needed to improve these skills if he wanted to work as an engineer, where he would be expected to oversee and sometimes operate equipment.

Rich came to appreciate several aspects of chemical engineering that have guided him throughout his career—particularly the problem-solving elements of the discipline, combined with math and science fundamentals and the practical nature of chemical engineering challenges. He also enjoyed the chemical engineering curriculum because it balanced theory with real world observations and implications, and it gave him the opportunity to leverage creativity and insight to reach novel solutions. Rich credits this ideal combination as the catalyst for the career path he chose to pursue.

Rich’s first job after graduating was a product development role at Procter & Gamble. The role involved visiting soap manufacturing plants to run a variety of

experiments. There, he discovered that although he enjoyed the chemical engineering discipline, he wanted to broaden the kind of problems he would take on while still working within teams.

Conscious that an MBA would enable him to apply his problem-solving skills to a wider range of topics, Rich enrolled at Harvard Business School in 1986. He then decided to join Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in 1988, where he embraced the opportunity to take on tough business challenges for his clients that required innovative solutions.

The combination of Rich’s chemical engineering background, experience at P&G,

and management training equipped him well to jump into the consulting role. In his early years, he worked in a wide range of industries—telecom, consumer electronics, paper manufacturing and distribution, and retailing. About five years in, he began working in biopharmaceuticals—with particular emphasis on manufacturing, R&D, and major corporate change programs—and this is where he invested most of his client time over the next 20 years. Despite shifting to the business side, his understanding of science and engineering were very valuable for the biopharma companies he supported and particularly for his work in R&D, operations, and strategy. Rich attributes his ability to look for new insights in solving problems as the touchstone of his career over the past 30 years.

In addition to serving clients, Rich took on ever-expanding leadership roles at BCG,

first in recruiting, then leading the New York office starting in 2000, then leading operations in North and South America starting in 2009. In 2013, he was elected Chief Executive Officer of the firm by its 700+ partners at the time (now 1,200). Rich is only the second engineer to lead BCG following its founder, Bruce Henderson.

As technology continues to accelerate its impact across the business world, Rich is finding that an engineering and

scientific mindset is increasingly valuable in shaping the firm’s offerings to clients. In a first for the management consulting industry, the three leading firms are all led by trained engineers—chemical engineers in fact!

For BCG, this means helping its clients adapt and win in a world increasingly shaped by digital and analytics. Under Rich’s leadership, BCG has introduced a digital innovation unit (BCG Digital Ventures) and an advanced analytics and machine learning unit (BCG Gamma) to bring new product and business innovation and artificial intelligence capabilities to clients. The firm has also developed Innovation Centers for Operations

Rich Lesser (center) at the Michigan Stadium with son, Robert (left), and daughter, Kate (right)

ALUMNI FEATURE


in the US, France, Germany, China, and Singapore to show how manufacturing can be reimagined by combining technology solutions in advanced robotics, autonomous in-plant vehicles, advanced sensors, machine learning, and agile work practices. This approach, combined with continued investments in globalizing the firm and investing in its many sectors and topics, has proven successful, as BCG has doubled in size since Rich became CEO in 2013.

Believing that technical and collaborative problem-solving skills are now more valuable than ever, Rich often tells students who are considering a career in business that an engineering degree is great preparation. “The problem-solving skills you learn as an engineer are useful for a range of challenges that any business leader faces today. When you have an engineering mindset, particularly a chemical engineering mindset, you are always looking for better ways to tackle challenges and improve performance. ChEs are trained to work in teams and to approach any problem in a fact-based and analytical manner with a bias to embracing change.”

Rich is so pleased to see that both Dean Alec Gallimore and his predecessor, David Munson, emphasize multidisciplinary problem solving and thinking. He is convinced this will lead to better innovation for business and society and provide better training for the next generation of engineers. This strategy also is core for the College of Engineering to remain a global leader in research and education and create an environment in which students and faculty have the opportunity to work with the best people in the world across a wide range of disciplines.

Rich is on the Dean’s Leadership Advisory Board and enjoys coming to North Campus regularly to see how it has grown and evolved over the three and a half decades since he was a student. He enjoys learning about the new approaches to problem solving that the latest generation of engineers are engaging in, particularly from his son, Robert, who is a senior in computer science engineering at Michigan. “Now seeing my son in the engineering college, I am so impressed to see how the university has evolved the learning environment for its students, particularly the emphasis on collaboration and real-time feedback in problem solving and the opportunities to work across disciplines,” he says. ChE

Rishi Narayan (BSE 2003, MSE 2005) is co-founder of Underground Printing (UGP), a national custom printed apparel and promotional products provider headquartered in Ann Arbor. (https://undergroundshirts.com/). Narayan and his childhood friend, Ryan Gregg, started the company in 2001 when they were sophomores at the University. Today, UGP has 35+ locations; these stores and offices are located in familiar college towns and big cities across the country.

Rishi learned about starting small businesses from his father, a professor of chemical engineering at Michigan State University who was also an entrepreneur. When he decided to pursue a degree in chemical engineering at Michigan, he assumed that learning about entrepreneurship would be part of his ChE degree.

So when Rishi came to Ann Arbor as a freshman, he was looking for an outlet for this entrepreneurial spirit. It wasn’t long before he and Gregg started a dorm-loft building business. Gregg, a civil engineering student, designed the lofts and Rishi would sell them. Unfortunately, Rishi soon realized that this enterprise would keep him active only for one week in September. He knew he wanted a business that he could pursue the other 51 weeks of the year.

He and Gregg considered some other products they could sell on campus to their fellow students. In their sophomore year, they decided to start a t-shirt business—after all, everyone wore t-shirts and they had a little experience making t-shirts in high school. They named the company that they ran from their dorm room, A-1 Screenprinting, so their company would be first in the phone book.

When his Ford Probe GT broke down on US-23, Narayan came across a way they could expand their enterprise. The tow truck driver who picked up his car had a basic screen-printing setup he wanted to sell. Rishi and Gregg took him up on the offer and, later, when they needed more room to produce shirts, that same driver invited them to work in his garage.

In 2003, they a purchased a screen-printing business in Chelsea so they could increase their production capabilities. They thought that company’s name seemed like a better fit for their company’s style, so they officially changed their company’s name to Underground Printing.

And, as it turned out, Rishi wasn’t getting any training in the ChE curriculum to help him run his enterprise. Not many faculty, let alone students, started businesses in those days. Rishi says of their early days, “I don’t remember if we made money but we learned a lot during those years about cash flows and receivables, production, and marketing and sales.” He says they learned how to run a small business as their company grew, with both their successes and failures.

When he looks back at his time as a chemical engineering student, he admits most ChE classes didn’t hold his attention. ChE 486, Chemical Process Simulation

ALUMNI FEATURE

Rishi Narayan (BSE ’03, MSE ’05)

Rishi Narayan at his Ann Arbor store on South University.

Continued on page 22


and Design I, however, was a course that he looks back upon fondly and credits with developing entrepreneurial skills he would use in the future.

His group’s project in this class was to design a non-alcoholic brewery. The students learned how to do quick calculations using their estimates and assumptions as they were making decisions, or “back of an envelope” calculations as their textbook called them. “This is what you do when you start a business.” Rishi says. “You make some quick assumptions and you roll with it.” Now he describes this process as, “focusing on a fast B, versus the slow A. You either succeed, or fail quickly, learn, and move on.”

This course was taught by Johannes Schwank. Rishi says Professor Schwank appreciated what he was doing with his startup and encouraged him to continue his work. He also valued the support he received from his undergraduate advisor, Dr. Susan Montgomery.

He still uses his math and problem solving skills today but he particularly appreciates the technical communications component of his undergraduate degree and the emphasis made on creating quality presentations. Every project came with a presentation. “You didn’t just turn in a report,” he notes. “You had to present your findings to the class and those PowerPoint slides had to look good!”

Rishi decided to go on for a master’s degree in chemical engineering, although all of his electives were IOE courses, where he was introduced to Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing.

While he values the chemical engineering training that has been part of his life for so many years, he says he never seriously considered working as a chemical engineer. He went to the career fair with his resume at the end of his freshman year, handed one copy to a company recruiter, and left the building. That was the beginning and the end of his chemical engineering career.

As he finished graduate school, he knew he had to make decisions about his career. “For most of my undergraduate career, the business was a ‘side hustle,’ just something I did while I was working towards graduation, ” Rishi remembers. “It could fail and I would just move to something else. But eventually I realized it was time to give it a real shot and see what we could make out of it. ”

When they decided to stay with the business, they also started developing the idea of opening a retail storefront in order to reach

their customers. While their competitors were moving exclusively online, UGP opened their first store on South University in early 2008. Eventually, they were able to take advantage of the downturn in the economy during the late 2000s to expand into vacant storefronts on several campuses. They continued this growth strategy and expanded throughout the Big Ten, and began opening store locations with bigger footprints that not only provided custom printing, but also began offering printed

collegiate merchandise for a more traditional shopping experience.

Currently, they are exploring new concepts for their expansion, returning to their roots by opening up small

offices in bigger cities. Rishi says, “Custom printing is our bread and butter and all we really need is a desk, samples, and a knowledgeable salesperson to help customers.” And that first location on South U? It’s now an ATM Vestibule!

With Underground Printing’s success, Rishi has been able to pursue a number of other interests. Last year, he joined the UofM Center for

Entrepreneurship (located within the College of Engineering) as a lecturer, where he teaches an e-commerce entrepreneurship class in both the fall and winter semesters.

In addition to serving on the boards of the Downtown Development Authority and the A2 Summer Festival, he has been able to invest in and start other businesses. He is a principal in Chibor Angels, a company that supports startups in Ann Arbor and Chicago (http://www.chibor.co/).

In 2014, he helped found AFC Ann Arbor, a 4th tier semi-pro soccer team. Members of the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL), AFC Ann Arbor played their home matches last season at Skyline High School in front of a crowd of 1,000 fans on average.While the Mighty Oak are quite successful, reaching the Midwest Final the last two years, Rishi says this venture is more of an investment in the community rather than business, as Washtenaw

County residents and local business have rallied around the team.While Rishi may not have ended up in the world of Chemical

Engineering, he has great appreciation for the ChE department, the faculty and staff, and everything he learned there. So much so that he has created, the Underground Printing Scholarship, which will be awarded to chemical engineering undergraduate students starting in 2019. ChE

Rishi Narayan

ALUMNI FEATURE

“This is what you do when you start a business.You make some quick assumptions and you roll with it.”

Continued from page 21


DEFENDING TOM BRADY:

THE SCIENCE BEHIND “DEFLATEGATE”

I remember watching Tom Brady’s first start against Notre Dame in September 1990. Late in the 3rd quarter, Michigan had fallen behind 17 points, yet Tom Brady still called out to his bench, “We can still win this game!” We didn’t, but I remember thinking that this was a singular act of leadership.

On January 18, 2015, the New England Patriots defeated the Indianapolis Colts at Foxboro by a score of 45 to 7. Two

hours later, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen posted the following tweet, “[the] NFL has found that 11 of the Patriots footballs used in the AFC title game were underinflated by 2 lbs. each, according to league sources.”

This tweet initiated a flurry of speculation, condemnation, and so-called expert opinion regarding the exact events behind this statement. However, it soon became apparent that the NFL was “generally unaware” that the pressure in inflated items such as tires, soccer balls, and yes, even footballs, decreases with decreasing temperature, and that environmental factors had not been considered when interpreting the ball pressure measurements.

It didn’t help that the NFL did not make the actual data public until the Wells Report was released on May 5, 2015. According to the data published in the report, the average measured pressure was either 1.1 or 1.4 below the 12.5 PSIG set point, depending on which referee gauge were used.

There were scientists, both in academia and in the media, who were willing to talk about the controversy and were highly sought after as experts on the subject. However, several of these analyses incorrectly used PSIG instead of PSIA when attempting to correct for the difference in field vs. locker room temperature using the Ideal Gas Law. In all fairness, I also started with PSIG, but quickly reversed course when I recalled a lecture by Professor Schwank.

As a Patriots fan and a Michigan alumnus, I knew I had to find the truth for myself. Hence, I created my own “Official Deflategate Kit.”

Based on the NFL’s estimate of the locker room temperature, a quick calculation shows that temperature could explain up to 0.98 PSI of the difference. Some excellent work by Thomas Healy at Carnegie Mellon showed that the volume of a football under wet conditions could expand by as much as 3%, resulting in an additional pressure drop of up to 0.8 PSI.

Clearly, a basic sensitivity analysis (simpler than in our ChE 360 labs) indicates that the observed results easily fall within a range that would be feasible due to natural conditions alone. Of particular note, the measured ball pressure of the intercepted ball that kicked off the entire investigation was 11.3 PSIG, vs. an expected 11.5 PSIG based on a locker room temperature of 67 °F. For a locker room temperature of 71 °F, as assumed by Sports Illustrated, the expected pressure would be —you guessed it—11.3 PSIG.

An excellent Ideal Gas Law analysis of Deflategate by my MIT colleague John Leonard can be found on YouTube, essentially putting the issue to rest. In his words, “Based on an extensive study of all the data and analyses that I can find, I am convinced that no deflation occurred and the Patriots are innocent.”

I decided to take an alternative approach, based on what I learned from Professor Fogler’s ChE 344 problem solving techniques. According to reports, the balls were allegedly deflated during a 105 second period when the Patriots locker room attendant took them into the bathroom. Was it possible to deflate 12 balls by 0.75 PSI in that short period of time?

This question also occurred to the expert consultants at Exponent, who provided the testing for the Wells Report. They designed and conducted an experiment to test exactly this using three interns with minimal training Not only did they successfully prove it was possible, they proved the interns could do it with exceptional accuracy. The results? The average ball pressures for each —11.7 ±0.09, 11.73±0.11, and 11.74±0.08. The variation on the balls allegedly deflated by the Patriot’s locker room attendant? An astounding 0.4. PSI.

From my years of being on the plant floor, I’ve learned that variation is the enemy of consistent performance, and that understanding the variance in an operational process is the key to understanding what is truly going on in the system.

Considering the Patriots’ culture of performance through process, it must be somewhat disappointing to discover that a few Exponent interns with minimal training designed and implemented a superior process to the Patriots’ “deliberate scheme to tamper”, according to attorney Paul Clement working on behalf of the NFL.

In other words, the fact that the interns were able to do it so well is evidence that natural environmental factors were behind the variation (changes in temperature, a mix of wet and dry balls), not deliberate intent to tamper.

Ultimately, the allegations resulted in Tom Brady being suspended for four games and the Patriots being fined $1 million and losing two draft picks, and the greatest come-from-behind Super Bowl victory in history

As for me, I spent more than 200 hours working this problem. I did enjoy spending time with my son and daughter as they helped me take measurements and clear out the freezer to make room for footballs. Note to NFL: there is a good reason why scientific method requires control experiments.

I also made great friends with Jay “The Beav” Flannelly, Tom’s team manager and introduced him to Julie Marron, director of the Deflategate documentary, Four Games in the Fall (www.fourgamesinfall.com), which premiered in Ann Arbor at the Michigan Theater in June 2018, which reviews the Deflategate controversy in extensive detail, concluding that “shoddy science” on behalf of the NFL was the real “crime.” The film also extends these observations to the current environment of science-for-hire, and its use in swaying public opinion and distorting the concept scientific integrity. ChE

ALUMNI FEATURE


Written by Dr. John Carrier (BSE ’87), Senior Lecturer, System Dynamics Group, MIT Sloan School of Management

When Dr. Shyam Suchdeo visited the department in July 2018, he shared some memories about Jerry Schultz, Jacob Geist, and his time as a student in the department.

Suchdeo credits Jerry Schultz for being a pioneer at Michigan in research collaboration with other units, long before it was common. He says Schultz, a chemical engineer and a biochemist, was working on projects with faculty in the medical school in the 1960s. His connection with medical school went beyond professional—his wife Dr. Jane Schultz was on staff at the medical school.

When Dr. Schulz went on sabbatical, Suchdeo was encouraged to work with Professor Joe Goddard, now professor emeritus in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC-San Diego and former ChE department faculty member at Michigan, on theoretical aspects of his research topic. In the years to come, Shultz and Goddard would collaborate on a wide range of topics of mutual interest.

He remembers a few of Schultz’ outstanding students such as David Fink, an inventor and entrepreneur, who was at Michigan with Suchdeo. Today, Fink is director of Entrepreneurial Services at UMBC TechCenter and founder and vice president for R&D of Cell Targeting, LLC. He has also kept track of Ravi Jain’s career, who worked with Schultz later. Jain is the founder and president of InnoSepra, a company that develops technologies in the areas of carbon dioxide capture, renewable power generation, and pollutants.

In 2015, Suchdeo created a ChE undergraduate scholarship in honor of his mentor at Air Products, Jacob Geist. Last year two students, Andrew Min and Nicole Blakkan-Esser, were the first recipients of the award.

Suchdeo first met Geist when he was interviewing for a job with Air Products. He recalls that Geist gave him a math problem to solve to see how his thought processes worked. After Suchdeo solved the problem, he was asked to write his calculations on a black board and show how he worked it out. Geist later told him that he was only the second candidate to answer the question correctly.

He learned a lot about problem solving and engineering from Geist his first year at the company. Geist was the chief engineer at Air Products so he was responsible for verifying new designs and managing technical risk. When Geist asked Suchdeo to review equipment that

he was not familiar with, Geist would tell him, “Don’t worry. You will figure it out.” He was continuing to test Suchdeo’s abilities to think on his feet.

He didn’t realize until years later that Geist was also a Michigan graduate. He wasn’t surprised that the two of them had worked together so well because Geist was training him just as his professors had at Michigan. When Geist did talk about his alma mater, he recounted stories about A.H. White, G.G.

Brown, and Donald L. Katz.Suchdeo has always valued his Michigan

education and knows it was vital to his success at Air Products. He says Schultz and his other professors “not only taught him about the subject but more importantly taught him about independent thinking and problem solving.” This “broader” approach allowed him to be better equipped to tackle any challenges in his career. ChE

A CONVERSATION WITH DR. SUCHDEO

Kathleen F. (MPH ’71) and Shyam R. (PhD ’73) Suchdeo have endowed the Professor Jerome S. Schultz Fellowship Fund, which will support graduate students in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Dr. and Mrs. Suchdeo established this fund in honor of Professor Schultz, former chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering, and hope it inspires fellow alumni and friends of the Department to make gifts for the same purpose. This gift qualified for the Bicentennial Opportunity Matching Initiative.

On establishing this fellowship fund, Dr. Suchdeo states, “In 1968, I came from Chicago to study towards a doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering, and made Michigan Engineering my home, despite not knowing anyone. When I left Ann Arbor in 1974, I had been richly rewarded. Thanks to a fellowship I received, I had the opportunity to work with renowned faculty and become immersed in the great culture that is a trademark of Michigan. In the spirit of the opportunity granted to me, the Jerome S. Schultz Fellowship Fund will provide financial support to incoming graduate students. It’s been over forty years since I left Ann Arbor, yet Michigan has never strayed far from my mind and heart.”

Dr. Suchdeo has served many years with Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., a leading company that provides industrial gases and related equipment to technology, energy, medical and industrial markets worldwide. As committed alumni to the University of Michigan, Dr. and Mrs. Suchdeo have also endowed the Dr. Jacob M. Geist Memorial Scholarship Fund in 2015, which supports undergraduate students in the Department of Chemical Engineering. ChE

By Hannah McKenley, Office of Advancement, College of Engineering

GIFTS TO ChE

Jerome S. Schultz Fellowship Endowed

Dr. Shyam R. Suchdeo and Kathleen F. Suchdeo


A CONVERSATION WITH DR. SUCHDEO

Anthony C. Lembke (BSE ChE ’80) recently documented his intention to provide a new gift to benefit the College and the Department of Chemical Engineering. When realized, the fund will provide discretionary support to both the College and the Department of Chemical Engineering.

An exceptionally committed alumnus, Lembke is an active volunteer member of the College of Engineering’s Leadership Advisory Board, serving on its Values & Culture Subcommittee. Since 2007, he has endowed three funds to support the College’s students and faculty: the Anthony Lembke Scholarship, the Anthony C. Lembke Student Global Experience Fund, and the Anthony C. Lembke Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Thank You!

GIFTS FROM ALUMNI, FRIENDS, AND RESEARCH PARTNERSAUGUST 1, 2017 TO NOVEMBER 30, 2018

Chemical Engineering Fellowships Fund And Graduate Student Support

Mrs. Sulin C. CampbellDr. Zheng Chen and Ms. Lanjing ZhangDr. and Mrs. Michael DiBattista Dr. Ramon Q. Erkamp and Ms. Erkamp Dr. Helen Y. Huang and Mr. Richard Q. LongDr. Emmanouil MavrikakisDr. Marina MileticDr. and Mrs. George H. MileyMr. Michael J. Molnar and Ms. Lisa MolnarMs. Jaclyn R. ReimannDr. and Mrs. Roger K. RainsMs. Jill K. Sanvordenker and Mr. Keason K. SanvordenkerMr. Vijaynaren SubramaniamShyam and Kathleen Suchdeo Fund of the Fidelity Charitable Gift FundCharles M Thatcher Fund of TIAA CharitableMr. and Ms. Ryan J. Verhey-Henke Dr. Barry F. Wolf and Dr. Sarah N. Jacobson

ChE Graduate Student SymposiumDr. Martin D. and Rebecca A. JohnsonMr. Michael J. Molnar and Ms. Lisa MolnarMr. and Mrs. Rishi R. Narayan

ChE Undergraduate FundMr. and Mrs. Andrew J. Smydra Mr. and Mrs. Hilliard L. Williams

Stuart W. Churchill Graduate FundDr. Brice Carnahan Dr. and Mrs. Jacob Eichorn Mr. and Mrs. Nirmal S. JainDr. and Mrs. Irving F. MillerJim and Mary Ann Wilkes

Gus L. Constan Scholarship FundMr. Liam Casey and Ms. Dello RussoMrs. Margaret M. S. ConstanMr. and Mrs. Telmer L. ConstanMr. Reginald D. Poindexter and Mrs. Ashleigh M. Eldemire-PoindexterMs. Karen Lobdell and Mr. Kevin Lobdell

Ms. Sue C. McMillin

Da Ke and Rui Endowed FundDr. John Q. Cheng and Ms. Jingxiao Zhang

Thomas G. DeJonghe Scholarship FundThomas G. DeJonghe

Alfred and Astrea Fatica Scholarship Fund

Alfred and Astrea Fatica

Dr. Jacob M. Geist Memorial Scholarship Fund

Shyam and Kathleen Suchdeo Fund of the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund

Lloyd L. Kempe Scholarship in Chemical Engineering

Dr. Gary F. Bennett and Ms. Judith C. BennettMr. Roger A. Frederick

Lievense Family Scholarship FundDr. Jefferson C. Lievense and Ms. Lisa Lievense

Joseph J. Martin FundDr. Murray M. Gilkeson, Jr.Dr. and Mrs. Jeremy M. HalesMr. and Mrs. William G. HarrisonDr. Lester S. KershenbaumDr. and Mrs. Warren D. SeiderMr. and Mrs. Frederick L. ShippeyDr. Jack M. Van den BogaerdeMr. and Mrs. Douglas G. Vander MolenJim and Mary Ann Wilkes

Alfred A. & Beverly H. Nuttall Endowed Scholarship Fund

Alfred A. and Beverly H. Nuttall

INDIVIDUAL GIVINGAline Underhill Orten Foundation Scholarship Fund

Aline Underhill Orten Foundation

Professor Jerome S. Schultz Fellowship Fund

Deborah A. Busby Scott and Janet FoglerDr. Jerome S. SchultzJim and Mary Ann Wilkes

Maurice J. Sinnott Prize in Chemical Engineering

Dr. Brice Carnahan Ms. Mary S. MahanMr. and Mrs. John A. RussellMr. Daniel J. Sinnott and Ms. Julie A. SinnottMr. and Mrs. William P. SinnottJim and Mary Ann Wilkes

Nancy Tsao Fund in Chemical Engineering

Ms. Nancy K. Tsao

Dr. Andrew Turner Endowed Scholarship Fund

The Nersesian Family Fund

Paul F. Werler Fellowship FundWerler Family Charitable Foundation Trust

James O. Wilkes Undergraduate Scholarship

Anonymous DonorMr. Randal D. BaumanDr. and Mrs. Finis E. Carleton IIIDr. Brice CarnahanProfessor Julie A. Champion and Mr. Kevin BoulwareDr. and Mrs. Jacob Eichhorn Dr. Joseph P. GreeneDr. and Mrs. Jeremy M. HalesDrs. Peter & Susan Lederman Mr. Donald K. McCord and Ms. Merrie C. WilliamsMr. and Mrs. Koh I. Murai Dr. Peter E. Parker Carol D. and George J. QuardererDr. and Mrs. Ken K. RobinsonDr. and Mrs. Bernard J. SchorleDr. Larry G. ShermanMr. and Mrs. Robert A. SingleyDr. Michael J. Solomon and Dr. Ellen C. LeeMs. Karen A. TrzcinskiDr. and Mrs. Antonio ValleVernon J. Mallu Fund of the Fidelity Charitable Gift FundJim and Mary Ann Wilkes

G. Brymer Williams Student Aid FundAnonymous Donor Dr. Susan N. BehrensDr. Brice Carnahan Mr. and Mrs. Mark R. Deschere

GIFTS TO ChE


Dr. and Mrs. Jacob EichhornDavid W. HaartzMr. Mark T. HarringtonDr. and Mrs. Robert M. ItamiDrs. Peter & Susan Lederman Ms. Pamela Maker and Mr. Chris A. BensonMr. and Mrs. Nathan T. MikolajczakMs. Anne H. MillerMr. and Mrs. Garry M. MlotMr. and Mrs. John J. MulhollandThe Nersesian Family Fund Peter Eddy ParkerDr. and Mrs. Roger K. RainsMr. James D. Randolph and Ms. Claire C. RandolphMr. Craig B. Reinhart and Ms. Laural A. ReinhartDr. and Mrs. Ken K. RobinsonMr. and Mrs. Robert A. SingleyDr. and Mrs. Dennis E. StoverMs. Karen A. TrzcinskiJim and Mary Ann Wilkes

Other Undergraduate Scholarship Funds

Anonymous Donor Mr. Daniel A. Arsulowicz, Jr. and Ms. Jodi K. ArsulowiczMr. Randal D. BaumanMr. and Mrs. Kenneth H. BergsmanMr. David R. CarpenterDr. and Mrs. Richard E. DenoMr. and Mrs. Michael J. DurisinMr. and Mrs. Scott P. FrederickMr. and Mrs. Jon M. GastonDr. Murray M. Gilkeson, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Stephen P. HartMr. and Mrs. Ronnie C. JohnsonDr. and Mrs. Larry M. JosephMr. and Mrs. Stephen S. KernsMr. and Mrs. Donald W. LittleMr. Zachary MarkinDr. LaRuth C. McAfeeMr. Christopher T. McMullenDr. Michele R. Monteith and Mr. Duane C. GarrettDr. Norm C. Otto and Professor Charlotte A. OttoProfessor Joel L. PlawskyMr. Robert A. PociaskMr. Gregory J. PoteralaRobert and Karen Niedzielski Charitable Fund of the Fidelity Charitable Gift FundDr. and Mrs. John T. Santini, Jr.Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. ScholtenDr. Richard M. Schwartz and Dr. Donna PruessMr. and Mrs. Robert A. Singley Mr. and Mrs. David B. StantonMr. Stephen C. SuMr. Peter J. Valianatos and Ms. Kelly-ValianatosMr. and Mrs. Daniel N. Viaches

Chemical Engineering Car FundMr. and Mrs. Hei ChingMr. Logan R. Preston

Other Chemical Engineering Funds

Ms. Sue E. Alberti Mr. Richard S. Andre and Ms. Sarah AndreAnonymous Donors (2)Dr. and Mrs. James E. BriggsMr. and Mrs. James D. Brown

Ms. Elisa A. CauleyMr. Brian ChungClark Family Gifting Trust of the Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust, Inc.Dr. Nicholas E ClayMr. and Mrs. Eric F. CookMrs. Helen B. CrosierMr. and Mrs. James B. CrossMr. Thomas G. DeJongheDr. and Mrs. W. Nicholas DelgassMr. and Mrs. James R. DeRosierMrs. Faye A. EbachDrs. Kristen A. Fichthorn and Themis Matsoukas Mr. Warren D. Gilbert and Ms. Mary J. GilbertMr. Eric W. GiuffridaDr. and Mrs. Martin E. GlucksteinBryan GoldsmithMr. & Mrs. Thomas W. GougeonMr. and Mrs. Ronald N. GraboisMr. and Mrs. George A. GroveMr. Mitchell J. HaitMr. Mark T. HarringtonMr. and Mrs. William G. HarrisonMr. and Mrs. John E. HartgerinkMr. and Mrs. Michael C. HendersonDr. and Mrs. Robert M. ItamiDr. and Mrs. Martin A. JavinskyMr. and Mrs. Shawn W. KeoughDr. and Mrs. Yeong KimDr. Bernard M. KulwickiMr. and Mrs. Norman E. LakeDrs. Peter & Susan LedermanMs. Jianshan Liao and Mr. Xiangyu NiDr. David I. Malitz and Ms. Michele R. MalitzMr. and Mrs. George R. Martin Mr. Che M. MartinezDr. and Mrs. Chester Miller

GIFTS TO ChE

GIFTS FROM ALUMNI, FRIENDS, AND RESEARCH PARTNERS

BE PART OF MICHIGAN CHEMICAL ENGINEERING – HELP ENSURE EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

If you would like to give a gift to the Department of Chemical Engineering’s undergraduate program or graduate student fellowship fund, or to any other department fund (e.g., undergraduate scholarships), please complete the form below and send it in with your contribution. Thank you!

NAME(S) AS YOU WOULD LIKE THEM TO APPEAR IN DONOR LISTNGS

ADDRESS

CITY STATE ZIP

E-MAIL

HOME PHONE BUSINESS PHONE

Check if you DO NOT wish to be listed in our donor listings

UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM (319715)

GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS (302086)

DISCRETIONARY FUND

OTHER ______________________________

Enclosed is my gift of $_________ made payable to The University of Michigan

Enclosed is my employer (or my spouse’s) matching gift form

Charge my gift of $_________ to Visa MasterCard Discover AMEX

Account Number_________________________

SIGNATURE DATE

PLEASE RETURN FORM TO:Pamela Bogdanski

Department of Chemical EngineeringThe University of Michigan

3074 H.H. Dow BldgAnn Arbor, MI 48109-2136

You can also give online at https://che.engin.umich.edu/alumni/giving/

The fund constitutes a gift for endowment and distributions will be made in accordance with the University’s then existing endowment distribution policy. Any surplus distributions from the fund during any period may be accumulated for later use for the above purpose or may be added to the principal of the fund at the University’s discretion.

ME: 18349

AUGUST 1, 2017 TO NOVEMBER 30, 2018

Company____________________________


Mr. and Mrs. Thomas C. MowryDr. and Mrs. Donald A. NastDr. Michael P. Niemiec and Ms. Anna MannMr. and Mrs. Michael S. O’DonnellDr. Suzanne A. Olds and Mr. Douglas C. OldsMr. Chirag A. Patel and Ms. Monal C. PatelDr. John R. PiazzaMr. Floyd W PrestonMs. Laurie R. Ramsay Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. RangerMr. and Mrs. Donald J. RayDr. Sam R. ReddyDr. Philip A. RiceMr. and Mrs. Stephen J. RidellaMr. and Mrs. Kurt P. RindfuszDr. and Mrs. Ken K. Robinson Mr. and Mrs. Howard Sachs Mr. William Hrabie and Mrs. Rita J. Sarno-HrabieMr. and Mrs. Charles J. SawyerDr. Craig W. SchmidtMr. Robert W. SchultzDr. Richard M. Schwartz and Dr. Donna PruessDr. Manesh J. ShahMr. and Mrs. Frederick L ShippeyDr. Debra F. SingerMrs. Dorothy H. SmithHenry and Barbara Fenker SmithiesMr. William SmolinDr. Michael J. Solomon and Dr. Ellen C. LeeMr. Stephen C. SuDavid Tukia Mr. and Mrs. Cole D. TurnbowDr. Jack M. Van den BogaerdeMr. Antonia K. VorsterMs. Amy L. Waier and Mr. Steven H. WaierMr. Xiaoyi Wang Mr. Abraham Wolf

CORPORATE GIVING Abbott Laboratories and The Abbott Laboratories FundAEM Charitable GivingAir Products FoundationAnonymous DonorAshland, LLCAssured Flow Solutions, LLCBiodiscovery LLCChevron CorporationCIMdata, Inc.Colgate-Palmolive CompanyThe Dow Chemical CompanyEli Lilly and Company FoundationExxonMobil FoundationExponent GTC Technology US LLCLockheed Martin CorporationLuoyang Jianlong Chemical Industrial Co., Ltd.Marathon Oil Company FoundationNalco CompanyOwens Corning FoundationPhillips Petroleum CompanyPPG Industries, Inc.The Procter & Gamble CompanyShell Oil Company FoundationTexas Instruments Inc. and Texas Instruments FoundationTotal E&P USA Inc.Upwind Technology, Inc.Vapor Titanium

NEWS FROM ALUMNI

In Memoriam Hugh O. McCormick (BSE ’39) passed away on November 2, 2018 in Clearwater, FL. He was a loyal Michigan alumnus. When he celebrated his 100th birthday in December 2017, he said that the University of Michigan was “not just my alma mater…it was the foundation for my life and career.” He often spoke of Michigan with obvious pride, and frequently talked about George Granger Brown, his favorite professor, as having left a lasting impression on him.

Hugh worked briefly for Curtis-Wright Aviation, and then accepted employment at the Ford Motor Company, remaining with the automaker until his retirement in 1986. Hugh is survived by three sons and a grandson. The family has requested that donations may be made to the University of Michigan College of Engineering.

Frank E. Pavlis (MS ’39) died August 24, 2018 in Allentown, PA, at the age of 101. He was the first employee hired by Leonard Pool at Air Products Inc. when Pool founded the company in Detroit in 1940.

1950s In view of the President’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris COP 21 Accords, Milton Meckler (MSE ’55) thought his ChE classmates might find his most recent e-book of interest. The book, “Frozen Legacy” is available on Amazon.com under his pen name: Mel Meckler. He says it has a wealth of useful references, statistics, and diagrams dealing with “serious negative climatic change outcomes.” Meckler has served as an adjunct professor of mechanical and chemical engineering at the School of Engineering and Computer Science at California State University, Northridge, having taught environmental science courses there for

several years. He was a State of Oregon registered environmental P.E., and has had some of his work published in the International Journal of Global Warming.

George Grove (BSE ’57, BS ’57 Chemistry, MSE ’59) says he has always appreciated his work and studies in the Chemical Engineering Department from 1953-1953. For the last fifty years he has been using that knowledge in the practice of patent law for General Motors. At age 82, he has slowed down but still enjoy the technology.

1960s Dave Haartz (BSE ’60) and Gordie Sam (BSE ’60), roommates and chemical engineering graduates in 1960, reconnected in Washington DC. Dave retired after 32 years with the title scientist; 16 years with the Procter and Gamble Company and 16 years with a division of Bristol Myers Squibb. (also see update for Gordie Sam (BSE ’60)

In the photo above, Dave Haartz, his wife Dr. Marilyn Fingerhut, Gordie Sams’ special friend Winnie Kam, and Gordie. Dave spent most of his engineering days working on familiar household products. At P&G. he worked on Crest toothpaste, first in the US, and then as a member of the team introducing Crest into Mexico, Venezuela, and the UK. His memorable contribution was being a member of the team moving Crest from lead tubes to plastic laminate tubes. Every tube still bears his signature sentence in red, first placed there in 1972. At Bristol, he worked on household names such as Drano and Windex. In retirement, he and his wife travel the world as members of the Travelers Century Club, visiting over 150 countries. In his spare time, he prepares tax returns for a diverse group of US tax clients living in the US and foreign countries.

ALUMNI NEWS


for their scientifically or socially distinguished contributions to the advancement of science or its applications. Dr. Moy is a graduate of the Wayne State and Georgetown law schools and currently serves as the general counsel of the Southeastern Universities Research Association, the management and operating contractor for the Jefferson Lab, a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory.

1990s Michael Ferrante (BSE ’93) was named head, R&D Business Capabilities, at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Princeton, NJ, where he is accountable for enabling R&D planning, operations, and decision making through project, portfolio, and clinical study management tools, analyses, business process design, and consultative support.

Matt (BSE, ’94) and Amy Birchmeier welcomed their newest addition, Ryan Birchmeier, to their family last October. He joins his older brothers Luke, Tyler and Eli, at their home in Kalamazoo, where Matt works for Zoetis (formerly Pfizer Animal Health).

Kristyn (Bohl) Masters (BSE ’97) is a professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was recently elected vice chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department and was inducted as a Fellow in the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She lives in Madison, WI with her two daughters.

Michelle (Field) Hutchinson (BSE ’98) lives in Chapel Hill, NC and works as a bioprocess applications specialist for GE Healthcare, supporting biotech companies in NC’s Research Triangle Park. She has 3 kids, Elliot, Henry and Annie, ages 8, 6 and 4 respectively, with her husband, Ryan, a Yale biomedical engineer.

Andy Rusiniak (BSE ’99, BME MS ’01) is in his 17th year working at Eli Lilly (Indianapolis) developing biologic therapeutics for clinical investigation. The past four years Andy has worked in the Chorus organization at Lilly, with external contract manufacturing organizations. Andy continues to enjoy spending time with his wife, Lani Pascual (MPH 2002), and their

Gordie Sam (BSE ’60) retired from 27 years as a nuclear engineer with the US Navy in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He was in DC to attend the National Convention of the Credit Union Association. He is in his 24th year as chairman of the Board of Pearl Hawaii Federal Credit Union, one of the largest credit unions on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Several years ago he was inducted into the Hall of Honor of the Defense Credit. (also see Dave Haartz (BSE ’60))

Douglas VanDerVoort (BSE ’64) celebrated his 77th birthday on the 7th day of the 7th month in 2018. He is grateful for his good health and credits his parents’ genes and his career in the food industry. He says it helps to know something about the amino acid profile of various proteins and the fatty acids in vegetable oils and animal fats.

1970s Jeff Lievense (BSE ’76) was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering this year for his leadership in biomanufacturing of sustainable chemicals. He was also selected to receive the prestigious Raphael Katzen Award by the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (SIMB).

1980s Chet Joglekar (MSE ’82) was founder & CEO of Conarc, Inc., a software company. He left his company in 2016 after a successful sale to the Austin-based Versata group.

Gary Greenberg (BSE ’83) is general manager of TTM Technologies in Anaheim, CA. Gary has been married to his wife, Dawn, since 1987 and they have two sons, Josh and Jeremy. Gary is also the manager for the rock/soul/funk band Sweet HayaH, from San Jose (http://www.sweethayah.com/).

Bruce Vaughen (BSE ’84, PhD Vanderbilt ’89) began his new role as the “Lead Process Safety Subject Matter Expert” with the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in August 2017. He has had three process safety-related books published: a Wiley/CCPS Guideline on managing process safety systems and metrics, as a principal author in 2016; a

CRCPress book on process safety, as a co-author in 2017; and, in March 2018, he was principal author for another Wiley/CCPS Guideline on siting and layout of facilities (another important process safety-related subject).

Both of Liz (Batesole) Hainey’s (MSE ’85, PhD ’93) sons are pursuing a career in opera. Her older son just received his electrical engineering degree from the University of Texas and is working on a vocal performance degree also. He had an internship with UT’s Butler School of Music Young Artists program, and sang with the University of San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in August. Her younger son had an internship in Italy last summer, where he sang in three operas. Both will be applying to graduate school in the fall. She’s not sure how two engineers produced two singers, but math and music go hand in hand!

Kathleen (Steilen) Hoffman (BSE ’86) is a senior vice president of EH&S and Technical Services for Sterigenics, a company that globally sterilizes medical products. She is married and lives in the Chicago area and has two teenage boys. She and her family have a lake house in Traverse City area so they can continue to enjoy the Michigan summers there.

Steve Waier (BSE 88), Innovation Director in the Silicones Technology Center, has been named M&E Technology Fellow. This promotion to Fellow expands the broader technical leadership of the Dow Performance Silicones business while recognizing the various contributions Steve has made to technology advancement previously with Dow Corning and now with Dow. The position of M&E Technology Fellow is one of the most senior technical positions in Dow and in the industry.

Margaret Gilligan (BSE ’89) is still with Great Lakes Coca-Cola (Reyes Holdings) as a principal engineer managing projects across their six plants in the Great Lakes Region. She hopes to have a few projects at the Detroit plant so she can visit Ann Arbor. The other plant in Michigan plant is in Grand Rapids.

Russell Moy (PhD ’89) was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fellows are recognized

ALUMNI NEWS


two children, Jonah (8) and Samuel (4), who are all now all avid Michigan fans. Andy has stayed active by rekindling his love for running and exercise with his new friends of November Project Indianapolis.

2000s After a brief stint at Procter & Gamble after graduating, Jahi Chappell (BSE ’00) returned to U-M and earned his PhD in ecology & evolutionary biology in 2009, with a focus on conservation biology, sustainable agriculture, and the right to food. He is currently the senior research fellow for agroecology and agriculture policy at the Centre for Agroecology, Water & Resilience at Coventry University in the UK. His first book, Beginning to end hunger: Food and the environment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and beyond, was released in January 2018.

Neel Chokshi (BSE ’00) is currently in Philadelphia with his wife, Puja, and two daughters, Alia (5) and Mila (2). They moved there from NYC in 2013 when he joined the cardiology clinical faculty at University of Pennsylvania. He is involved in seeing patients, teaching and health innovation, and routinely references his ChE background in stomping out heart disease.

Nick Ortiz (BSE ’00) and his wife, Heather, welcomed their third child, Elena, in July 2017. Her older brothers are well on their way to being full-blooded Michigan fans, and are helping their sister along, too.

David Nickelson (BSE ’01) competed at the 2018 Walt Disney World Marathon. He placed first in handcycle and was the first overall finisher! Dave crushed his back in 2002 so his

lower legs are paralyzed and he competes using a handcycle. He recently started a new position as the director of research at Techson IP, an Intellectual Property Consulting and Technology firm.

Aaron Napier (BSE ’02) was recently promoted to staff measurement engineer at Chesapeake Energy He married Cheryl Napier in 2002 and they live in Edmond, OK. They have four girls, Olivia (9), Emma (8), Aubrey (5), Adelynn (4). They have one dog, Bo, who is 4 and named for the late great Glenn “Bo” Schembechler.

Erik Schroeppel (BSE ’03) and his wife had a baby boy in 2018! Easton Frederick Schroeppel was born on January 16. They have relocated to Winslow, ME, where he and his wife have accepted new roles with Elanco Animal Health. He was previously in Eli Lilly’s clinical trial supply chain organization. He has rejoined Elanco as a consultant in their Global Supply Chain organization supporting the vaccine network.

Carl Shubitowski (BSE ’89) is now living in Somerville, MA and is married to Julia Kim who graduated from North Carolina. He recently started a new job as a senior quality engineer at an MIT startup called Third Pole Therapeutics.

Tawnya Sowerwine (BSE ’03) is a staff advance product quality planning engineer at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Asheville, North Carolina. In

ALUMNI NEWS

June of last summer, she was in her little brother’s wedding, Ken Sowerwine (BSE ’13), as he married his long-time sweetheart in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They reside near their sister where he works as a continuous improvement engineer at Gill Industries.

Jeff Baxter (BSE ’04, MSE ’04) was promoted to senior vice president in recycling operations for World Oil Corp last year. He and his wife, Rachel, and live in Long Beach, CA with their two children, Zeke (4) and Zara (2), and their dog, Biscotti.

Jeff Henrikson (PhD 2005) recently completed his third novel, Do the Gods Give Us Hope? (A Prayer for Peace Book 3), which came out in November 2018. For more information about Jeff’s novels, go to www.jeffhenriksonauthor.com

Eric Jankowski (BSE ‘05, MS ‘06, PhD ‘12) was recognized by the American Society for Engineering Education’s Prism’s 20 Under 40 for his research contributions with “real-world impact.” Eric was honored for his work on inexpensive and renewable commercial-size solar panels. He received an NSF CAREER grant to use computational simulations to figure out how best to arrange the molecules of advanced carbon-based materials so that they’ll efficiently convert sunlight to electricity. Read more about Eric at http://www.asee-prism.org/young-pacesetters. He adds that he and his wife welcomed their second boy, Miles, to the family in September 2017.

Kyle Allison (BSE ’06) is an assistant professor in biomedical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University.

Michael Chisholm (BSE ’06) and his wife, Kristin, an Eastern Michigan graduate, married in 2016 and are expecting their first child. In June 2018, he completed an MBA at the University of Oregon Lundquist College of Business, specializing in sustainable business as well as leadership & advanced strategy. During his MBA, he founded a startup called Feros to develop a battery electric trailer to overcome the barriers to adopting EV’s in the freight industry. He came back to the Ann Arbor area in July 2018 looking to expand his engineering team to develop his company’s product.


ALUMNI NEWS

Elizabeth (Fiorani) Thoma (BSE ’06) and her husband, Christopher, welcomed their third child, Imogen Ruby Fiorani Thoma, on October 29, 2017. Big brother Everett Oberon Fiorani

Thoma, who was born January 7, 2016, loves singing “Let’s Go Blue!” We lovingly remember biggest brother Oberon Christopher Fiorani Thoma, born on November 24, 2014.

Evan Kostishak (BSE ’06) married five years ago and he and his wife, Claire, have three children: 2-year-old, Iona, and twins, Violet and Calvin, born May 30, 2018. They still live in Midland where he works at Dow.

Andy Wang (BSE ’06) is vice president at Baring Private Equity Asia (http://www.bpeasia.com) in Hong Kong. He’s been married to his wife, Sarah Chang, for three years. He’s an avid videographer! Watch one of his videos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqlVPhr_vhM

Jeffrey Carey (BSE ’07, B.Mus.A. ’07) finished his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania in April 2018.

Erin Knight (BSE ’07, MEng ’09) founded her company, Engineering Radiance, to teach people with migraine headaches how to use root cause analysis to solve the underlying issues in their environment, lifestyle and biology. Who knew learning about process control models and heat exchangers would help someone understand hormonal swings? This past year she hosted the Chronic Headache and Migraine Summit, which

gave hope and practical solutions to tens of thousands of migraine sufferers. She is eternally grateful for the foundation she got at Michigan. Go Blue!

Kevin Dahlberg (BSE ’08, PhD ’14) married Carmen Allen (LSA ’13) in May 2014. The two welcomed their first child, Rebekah Cherith, on August 23, 2017. Kevin is a research scientist at XALT Energy in Pontiac, Michigan.

Johnson Mark (BSE ’08) and his friend and colleague, Sunbo Hwang, interviewed for Tesla on the same date in 2017 and have, since then, been working together on Li-ion cell technology and battery pack manufacturing at the company. Interestingly, he found out later that Sunbo graduated from Michigan in December 2009.

Alexander Cohen (BSE ’10, MENG PharmEng ’12) got married on September 9, 2017, to Amy DeLozier, a Michigan grad from the School of Public Health. They live in Indianapolis.

After 8 years in Houston, Jessica (Ho) Kragas (BSE ‘10) has started a new role at Shell as a senior production technologist in Brisbane, Australia.

Sunbo Hwang (BSE ’10) is living in San Jose, CA and working for Tesla in Li-ion cell technology. He was surprised to meet colleague, Johnson Mark (BSE 2008) during an interview on the same day for the same position! They are working together now.

David Mui (BSE ’10) is a project manager for onsite gas generation systems in the Airgas Floxal group in Houston Texas.

In January, Katherine (Koterba) Pacynski (BSE ’10) was named a shareholder of the Dobrusin Law Firm, an intellectual property firm in Pontiac, Michigan, where she is a patent attorney. She was also named to the Oakland County Executive’s Elite 40 Under 40 Class of

2018. Most importantly, she and her husband, Steve (BA ’06), welcomed their first child, Claire Ellen, on March 10, 2018.

Emily Robb (BSE ’10) is living in Troy MI and working for FCA on sensors for autonomous vehicles.

Reggie Rogers (PhD ’10) has recently been granted tenure and promoted to associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Cassandra Ballert (BSE ’11) traveled the world with her partner on a tandem bicycle in 2018. Apart from cycling, she is living in Augsburg, Germany and working at Rosenheim University of Applied Sciences as a research assistant with the Sustainable Engineering and Management group. Cassandra recorded her travels on her blog: talkie-walkie.us.

Kevin (BSE ’12) and Chae Lewis welcomed, Calise Lorraine Lewis, into the world on July 2nd, 2018. She was 5 lbs.15 oz. and 18.5” long.

Stuart Marshall (BSE ’12) recently started a new position at AK Steel as a process engineer. He got married to Amber in 2014 and they live in Canton, MI.

Priya Thyagarajan (BSE ’12) and Charles Machi (BSE ’10) met in 2010 when they were both peer advisors at the Engineering Advising Center. They are getting married on September and still live in the Ann Arbor area!

After graduating with his PhD in chemical engineering in August and traveling the world for a few months, Alex Wang (BSE ’12, BSEMS ’12 ) has relocated back to Michigan. He is currently working at AGC in Ypsilanti, a glass supplier for the automotive industry, where he is an R&D engineer.


ALUMNI NEWS

Nicholas Hadjicharalambous (BSE ’13) got married last summer. His wife is a pediatric resident at Detroit Children’s Hospital. He is working on an MBA at Ross in the part-time weekend MBA Program. He is eager to connect with any other ChE’s currently pursuing an MBA!

Alex Kolb (BSE ’13) and Emily Carroll (BSE ’14) were engaged on February 10, 2018. They met in ChE 230 in their first group homework. They both currently live and work in Baton Rouge, LA.

Corey Peterson (BSE ’13) was engaged to Taylor Jacobs on January 2017, and on April 14, 2018, they got married in Austin TX. Corey works as an application engineer for AVL providing on-site support for GM in Pontiac MI. Taylor Jacobs, CRPC, works for Richard W Paul & Associates as a client service advisor in Novi. They recently bought their first house in Wixom MI and are going through all the joys and pains of their first renovation. They also have a little monster, Luna, a 3-year-old Husky, who is the joy of their lives.

Spencer Scolnick (BSE ’13) is still with Shell. He finished up his offshore field assignment on the Perdido Spar and returned to the office for seven months as a drilling engineer for the Gulf of Mexico TLP/Spar group. He is now on a 12-month broadening assignment in The Hague, Netherlands, working for the central performance and planning team for the Wells Organization.

Sita Syal (BSE ’13, ESE ’14) and Zach Fetters (LSA ’13) got married in East Lansing, Michigan on August 11, 2018.

Amanda Ashworth (BSE ’14) and her fiancee welcomed a baby boy on March 25, 2018. Everyone is healthy and doing very well! They reside in Dallas, TX.

Amanda Ashworth (BSE ’14) and her fiancee and welcomed a baby boy on March 25, 2018. Everyone is healthy and doing very well! They reside in Dallas, TX.

Maggie Bridgewater (BSE ’14) and Joe Potter (BSE AERO ’13) were married on the 2017 winter solstice in Florida. They met in The Dude while Maggie was working as a barista at Mujo Cafe. Joe and their hound dog, Layla, live in Los Angeles, and Maggie plans to join them after finishing her PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Andrew Campbell (BSE’14) and Cindy Lee (BS ’14) were married on April 13th, 2018. Andrew is working as a chemical engineer in the power generation industry at Black & Veatch in Ann Arbor while Cindy is finishing her 4th year at the University of Michigan Medical School and applying to residency programs in Obstetrics & Gynecology. If all goes well and Cindy matches at the University of Michigan, Andrew will begin the Weekend MBA program at the Michigan Ross School of Business starting in May of 2018. Go Blue!

Marcus Deloney (BSE ’14, MSE ’16) was engaged to his long-time boyfriend, Brandon Oselio (EE PhD) on May 12, 2018 on the Michigan Diag. They met while Marcus was finishing his bachelor’s and have since moved to Sacramento so he can finish his PhD in BME.

D’Arcy Cook (BSE ’17) started working at GHD, an environmental consulting firm last summer. She still lives in Ann Arbor.

Joshua Kempfer (BSE ’14) has a new position at BASF as a process engineer in West Memphis, AR.

Keith Minbiole (BSE ’14) is back in school pursuing a master’s in medical science in anesthesiology from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He will be a certified anesthesiologist assistant in 2 years—it is kind of like a PA but solely for administering anesthesia.

Kayla Zabowski (BSE ’14), a graduate of Avery Dennison’s Operations Leadership Development Program, is a manufacturing product optimization engineer at the company. She is still traveling with the friends from her 2014 ChE class, Amanda Walsh, Megan Egebert, and Somya Sharma.

Brian Lu (BSE ’15) is working in Wausau WI for Kraft Heinz as a plant operations risk management/continuous improvement manager.

Dennis Paul (BSE ’15) and Brooke Meyers (BSE ’15) met in orientation on their first day at Michigan. They were married in September of 2017. Dennis currently works in Findlay, Ohio at Marathon Petroleum as a planning engineer and Brooke is working in Columbus at Anheuser-Busch as a brewing manager.

Vijaynaren “Vijay” Subramaniam (MSE ’14) lives in Dallas TX and works for GHD Services Inc., as an air emissions project engineer.

Christopher Rockwell (BSE ’15) started at Tokyo Electron America in Boise, ID working as a process engineer in plasma etch. (2018)

Jake Jordahl (PhD ’16) and Stacy Ramcharan (PhD ‘17), who met while doing graduate research in Joerg Lahann’s lab, were married on September 1, 2018. They are both working for ExxonMobil in polymer product development in Houston, Texas.

In July, John Joseph DeBono Jr. (BSE ’17) accepted an associate engineer-production position with DTE Energy at the Belle River Power Plant. This is his first job as an engineer.


Non-Profit Org.U.S. Postage

PAIDAnn Arbor, MIPermit #144

University of Michigan3074 H.H. Dow Building2300 Hayward StreetAnn Arbor, MI 48109-2139

Dear ChE alumni,

Please excuse our delayed delivery! We know our loyal readers likely noticed that the annual newsletter landed in your mailbox later than usual. We spent the publication pause freshening our design. We also spent a great deal of time thinking about you, and how we can keep you connected to Michigan Chemical Engineering no matter where in the world you are.

We want to know what matters most to you. I invite you to share your thoughts on both this newsletter, and on the types of department information you want to read. Also, if you have ideas for future alumni activities, please let us know. We are continually looking for new ways to engage our alumni and to keep you informed about what is going on in the department. I encourage you to email me at [email protected] with your feedback and suggestions.

We will soon return to our annual electronic and print newsletters’ regular schedules. In the meantime, remember to join us on the Web, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Thank you and Go Blue!

Sandy SwisherCommunications and Alumni Relations [email protected]

Note to our alumni

che newsletter designing · 3074 h. h. dow building 2300 hayward street ann arbor, mi 48109 (734)...

Documents