Tag: Chemical Engineering

Statement

Firstly, I want to thank MTU for awarding me the prestigious doctoral finishing fellowship award. I was born and brought up in south India. I did my undergraduate and master’s degree at IIT-Dhanbad, which accepts only the top 1% of students of India every year. For my Ph.D., I was offered a full scholarship at University of Queensland, Australia, and Penn state university, but I rather chose MTU to work under Dr. S. Komar Kawatra.

Prof Komar Kawatra is leading the CO₂ capture and utilization research team at Michigan Tech University. Our goal is to capture CO₂ from coal-fired power plants at minimal cost and convert CO₂ into value-added products like Syn-gas, Oxalic acid, etc. For the last four years, I have worked extensively on carbon capture and utilization projects. I and my team of undergraduate researchers have continuously improved the efficiency of our CO₂ scrubber system and also tested the prototype in a pilot-scale environment. We presented our work at International Conferences representing MTU and received applause. I have published several papers on chemical absorption CO2 capture, in high-impact journals.

I Worked on multiple CO₂ capture projects and successfully submitted reports. Successfully captured CO₂ from Michigan Technological University steam plant as part of my Ph.D. thesis project. I have installed our pilot-scale CO₂ scrubber system at the Michigan tech Power plant and reduced the CO₂ emissions from 8% to 4%. I have trained Sam Root, a Chem Eng. Freshman on this project, who won national awards in Poster competitions.

Photography and rock climbing are two of my favorite pastimes. I am extremely pleased with my decision to pursue my Ph.D. at MTU. The upper peninsula of Michigan is a photographer’s dream, both in winter and in fall. When I have free time, I like to explore different parts of UP and take some landscape pictures. 

Yuesheng Gao is a Ph.D. candidate in Chemical Engineering at Michigan Technological University. He obtained a Master of Science degree and a Bachelor’s in Mining Engineering at Central South University in 2016 and 2014, respectively.

Yuesheng joined Dr. Pan’s research group in 2017. Since then, he has been involved in multiple projects, including the development of the synchronized tri-wavelength reflection interferometry microscope (STRIM), dust control, oil extraction, graphite purification, and froth flotation. His work mainly focuses on revealing the interfacial interactions and the stability of thin films (TMs) between different materials in liquid/gas circumstances. The findings in his work provide new perspectives in understanding the fundamental mechanisms of diverse separation processes. His contributions to the mining industry and the interfacial science areas have been well recognized.

Yuesheng is grateful for this invaluable opportunity to receive the Doctoral Finishing Fellowship from the Graduate School of Michigan Tech. He also wants to express his appreciation to his advisor, Dr. Pan, for the relentless guidance and encouragement.

I started my journey at Michigan Tech in Fall 2015. My Ph.D. research has focused on understanding the behavior of viruses (coded in nature and not in computers!) and developing methods for vaccine and biotherapeutic manufacturing. Prevention against the spread of viral diseases has been one of humankind’s foremost challenges. The current vaccine manufacturing strategy to separate target viral products from the contaminants necessitates an upgrade to increase production capacity using low-cost methods. My research is geared towards characterizing viruses to generalize a method to purify various viral-based biotherapeutics. In these graduate school years, perceiving the complexity of viral interactions has intrigued me to pursue a research career to keep investigating in-depth the nature of viruses and other biotherapeutic agents. These answers will help in developing better technologies to process such intricate moieties.

I consider myself very fortunate to be mentored by Dr. Caryn Heldt who guided me to develop an advanced, scientific thinking process. I am very thankful to be awarded with the Finishing Fellowship for summer 2020 and for the support to focus on my degree completion.

Long Zhang
Chemical Engineering

I am a Ph.D. student in Chemical Engineering Department, and this is my fourth year. My research focuses on the dephosphorization from iron ore, particularly goethitic iron ore. I have been working with Dr. Tim Eisele on this project since fall 2014. By applying both bacterial and chemical leaching methods, we are able to remove about 95% of the phosphorus from the ore making the ore successfully meet the industrial standard.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Graduate School for the financial support, which allows me to focus entirely on the completion of my final dissertation. I also want to thank Dr. Eisele for his constant support throughout my entire graduate school studies.

Sanaz Habibi
Chemical Engineering

I joined Michigan Tech as a Ph.D. student in September 2014. Since January 2015, I have been working as a graduate research assistant at Medical micro-Device Engineering Research Lab. (M.D.-ERL). My research focuses on developing and optimizing reliable low-cost point of care tools for rapid and quantitative disease diagnosis.

I want to express my gratitude to Graduate School for providing me the Finishing Fellowship. This fellowship gave me the opportunity to put my entire focus on completing my dissertation. I would also like to thank my Ph.D. advisor Prof. Minerick for her constant support and encouragement.