Michigan Tech undergraduates and graduate students studying chemical engineering took first and second place in the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration’s (SME) Mineral and Metallurgical Processing Division 2013 student poster contest at the SME annual meeting in Denver.
Undergraduate winners:
First place: Katrina Swanson
Second place: Paul Hagadone II
Graduate student winners:
First place: Brett Spigarelli
Second place: Howard Haselhuhn
ASISC is a true partnership of academic institutions and industry with research interests in sustainable iron and steel making. This partnership leverages the strengths of academia and industry by pooling resources to address a diverse spectrum of interdisciplinary research questions of mutual benefit to ASISC members.
The department will hold a required Graduate Student Orientation for all new incoming MS and PhD students on Tuesday- August 27, 2013 beginning at 10:00am in Chemical Sciences & Engineering (building #19) room 201.
Lunch will be provided.
Another I-Corps Team Claims First: Michigan Tech’s latest I-Corps team placed first among 21 teams in New York last week, after a final presentation of their market analyses for new technologies. The team was led by Chemical Engineering Associate Professor Adrienne Minerick, with post-doc Kaela Leonard serving as entrepreneurial lead and team mentor Mary Raber, associate director of the Institute for Leadership and Innovation.
A National Science Foundation program, I-Corps stands for Innovation Corps. Its goal is to help researchers learn how to do customer and market analysis, to enable them to fine-tune their technologies to meet an actual market need.
The technology they are looking to develop is a rapid, portable blood-typing device.
Minerick’s team is the third one from Michigan Tech chosen to participate in the I-Corps program.
The Annual Chemical Engineering Department Awards Convocation was held in the Rozsa Center on April 11, 2013. This is an opportunity to thank the faculty, staff and students for their hard work and dedication. The department recognized the support of Mrs. Karen Hubbard, Kimberly-Clark, Dow Chemical, Dow Corning and UOP for their donations and services, which made this year’s Awards Convocation possible.
Adrienne Minerick (ChE) was elected to the American Society of Engineering Education’s Board of Directors. She will serve as the Professional Interest Council I Chair. ASEE has over 12,000 members that include deans, department heads, faculty members, students, and government and industry representatives who hail from all disciplines of engineering and engineering technology.
The Department of Chemical Engineering 2012-2013 Awards Convocation will be on April 10, 2013
Rosza Center, 2:00-4:00 P.M.
The Keynote eakers will be Michigan Tech chemical engineering alumnus James A. Mack ‘59 and his wife, Lorna, donated $2 million to establish an endowed chair in cellular and molecular bioengineering. Mr. Mack retired as President and Chief Executive Officer of Cambrex Corporation, a developer and marketer of specialty chemicals. His company has successfully combined biology with engineering—especially in the rapidly emerging field of tissue engineering and cell therapy, and the development of small molecule therapeutics. Poster
James and Lorna Mack are dedicated to helping Michigan Tech achieve its vision—to grow as a premier research university of international stature, delivering education, new knowledge, and innovation.
ESC/BRC Student Research Forum Winners Announced
The Ecosystem Science Center and the Biotechnology Research Center announced award recipients of the Ninth Annual ESC/BRC Student Research Forum, held March 27.
For the graduate students, two Grand Prize Awards and six Merit Awards were presented. They were selected from among the 59 posters and abstracts submitted by graduate students conducting research related to ecology, the environment and biotechnology at Michigan Tech.
Maria Tafur of the Chemical Engineering depaertment won a Merit Award for, “Reduction of Porcine Parvovirus Infectivity in the Presence of Protecting Osmolytes, ” Advisor: Caryn Heldt
Four Michigan Tech Chemical Engineering students placed in the annual Minerals Processing division undergraduate and graduate poster competition during the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME) Annual meeting in Denver on February 27. This annual poster competition showcases research from the top mining and mineral processing programs across the nation and is judged by some of the top engineers and scientists in industry and academia. It involved a five-minute oral presentation in a special session as well as a public poster display at a large SME gathering.
New Technologies from Engineered Self-Modifying Proteins
Professor Wood’s work seeks to apply biological concepts of protein function, cell metabolism, genetics and evolution to the molecular-scale development of new technologies. These goals are achieved through the development of designer fusion proteins that combine domains and functions from unrelated proteins and enzymes. We typically combine rational protein engineering with genetic selection to create and fine-tune the desired activities. In oseparations, we have combined a previously developed pH-sensitive self-cleaving protein with a variety of purification tags to produce simple and economical methods for purifying recombinant proteins. Our most recent work involves rational and evolutionary approaches to optimizing our self-cleaving tags for use in a wider variety of expression hosts. In biosensing, we have developed allosteric proteins that incorporate human hormone receptors, and have used these proteins to generate Escherichia coli strains that are growth-dependent on hormones and hormone-like compounds. Remarkably, this genetically simple bacterial sensor can differentiate agonist from antagonist activities and has been effective in detecting a wide variety of strong and weak estrogenic compounds. More recently, we have applied this system to the discovery of thyroid active compounds, as well as the evaluation of environmental endocrine disruptors in humans and animals, and even the discovery of possible autism-associated environmental factors. Applications of our designed proteins are far-reaching, and include drug discovery, biosensing, drug activation, reversible knockouts for metabolic research, new genetic selection systems, and advanced cellular control strategies.