Category: Research

David Shonnard (ECM/SFI) gave an invited talk, “Biofuel Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities” at Wayne State University for the Sustainability@Wayne seminar series on Oct. 20.

CBS Sunday Morning featured a story about David Edwards, a 1983 Michigan Tech alumnus and winner of Tech’s Melvin Calvin Medal, who designed and markets the o-phone, a phone that transmits aromas. Edwards is a biomedical engineering professor at Harvard University. Watch the story.

Faith Morrison (ChE), has been elected to the status of Fellow of the Society of Rheology. She’ll receive her certificates during the SOR 87th Annual Meeting in Baltimore in October. In his letter to Morrison, SOR President Gregory B. McKenna said the awardees recognized at the Baltimore meeting are the “inaugural” class of fellows.

Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, Adrienne Minerick (ChE), has received a $50,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a research project titled, EAGER: Therapeutic Protein Separations via Surface Isoelectric Focusing (SIEF).

Technology Century, a science and technology news website run by the Engineering Society of Detroit, published an article about the NSF-funded meeting of multidisciplinary bioenergy researchers from Canada, the US, Central and South America that was held at Michigan Tech last week. Read the article.

In an article about graphene, The Economist mentioned Michigan Tech’s research into graphene-based 3-D bioprinting to regenerate nerve cells in patients with spinal cord injuries.

Technology Century, a science and technology news website published by the Engineering Society of Detroit, reported on a visit by ESD executives to Michigan Tech and plans to establish a student chapter of the ESD at Michigan Tech.

Tech Century, a science and technology news service published by the Engineering Society of Detroit, ran a comprehensive report and photo gallery on their tour of Michigan Tech engineering labs last week.

ScienceAroundMichigan, a science news website focusing on Michigan research, published an article on the international bioenergy conference held at Michigan Tech earlier this month.

Caryn Heldt (ChE) is the principal on a three-year research and development project that received a $349,250 grant from the National Science Foundation. The project is titled, GOALI: Graphene Paper Sensor for Disease Detection.
Also involved in the project are Adrienne Minerick (ChE), Julia King (ChE) and Warren Perger (ECE).

TV 6 and Fox UP, reported on Professor Adrienne Minerick’s (ChemEng) appointment as associate dean for research and innovation in Tech’s College of Engineering. You can view the story online.

Assistant Professor Caryn Heldt (ChE) has been awarded an Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship to conduct research at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio on graphene biosensors.

Adrienne Minerick has been invited to serve on the Chemical Engineering Education (CEE) Journal Publications Board. Her three-year appointment will begin Fall 2015. CEE is the premier archival journal for chemical engineering educators.

Scientists and engineers—including several at Michigan Technological University—have been talking for years about biofuel, particularly cellulosic ethanol, which is fuel made from trees and other woody plants. The stumbling blocks have been huge and progress, slow. But the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Renewable Fuels Standard mandates that cellulosic ethanol be blended into gasoline for use in vehicles, so the need is immediate.

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It’s one of the world’s biggest killers, leading to lung cancer, heart disease, and COPD, not to mention child pneumonia and low birth-weight babies. It affects billions of people. And if you think it’s tobacco, you are wrong, but understandably so. The smoke from wood-fired cook stoves in the developing world is a best-kept secret in the pantheon of unhealthy things we humans inflict upon ourselves. The solution is not simply a matter of telling women (for it is mostly women who cook) to find some other way to prepare the family meal. Alternatives to gathering your own wood are typically too expensive or simply nonexistent for subsistence farmers. However, that may soon change in the West African nation of Benin, thanks to a partnership between students at Michigan Technological University and the French firm AFI.
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