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Two chemical engineering majors have received national honors for research they presented Nov. 15-17 at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) National Meeting in San Francisco, Calif.
Both students are Trustee Scholarship recipients, and each worked with professors on research funded by the National Science Foundation.
Matthew Metzger ’05 (Fanwood, N.J.) took first place in the Education Section competition for his work with Scott Moor, assistant professor of chemical engineering, and Polly Piergiovanni, associate professor of chemical engineering, on development of inexpensive, flexible lab kits that will allow students to design, implement, and test their own process control systems. Fellow Trustee Scholarship recipient and chemical engineering major David Keyser ’04 (Mahwah, N.J.) also has worked on developing the kits, which will be used by all chemical engineering majors at Lafayette.
The trio collaborated through Lafayette’s EXCEL Scholars program, in which students assist faculty with research while earning a stipend. EXCEL has helped make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research, and many of the 180 students who participate in the program each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
Katie Barillas ’04 (Bethlehem, Pa.) earned second place in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Engineering competition for her methanol research with Javad Tavakoli, associate professor and head of chemical engineering, and another researcher.
This fall, Tavakoli also presented the methanol work they conducted with Joel Gross ’05 (Northampton, Pa.) and others at the 226th American Chemical Society National Meeting in New York City. Four Lafayette students shared their research at the event, and three had work presented by others.
“There is currently much interest in the conversion of methanol to dimethoxymethane (DMM) because of the potential of DMM as a diesel fuel additive,” says Tavakoli. “This presentation discussed the oxidation of methanol to DMM over supported metal oxide catalysts.”
Barillas is excited about her research experience and has decided to pursue a graduate program in the field, he adds.
Three other chemical engineering majors presented their research at the AIChE National Meeting, including EXCEL Scholar Naa Quarcoo ’04(Accra, Ghana), who studied the influence of magnetic fields on water and wastewater treatment with Art Kney, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering; Javad Tavakoli, associate professor and head of chemical engineering; and Andrew Dougherty, associate professor of physics. Her conference paper was coauthored with chemical engineering majors Fernando Molina-Polo ’04 (Bethlehem, Pa.)and Shawna Showalter ’04 (Waynesboro, Pa.), and civil engineering major Jeffrey Chittim ’05 (Barrington, R.I.).
Barillas also has participated in the research on magnetic water conditioning — an environmentally friendly technology for treating industrial wastewater — which Kney presented earlier this year at the International Water Association Conference at Cranfield University in England. Through a National Science Foundation grant, he is spending the fall semester at the university to collaborate with another groundbreaking leader in the field.
Gabriella Engelhart ’05 (York, Pa.) traveled to the AIChE conference to explain her EXCEL Scholars project with Tavakoli that focuses on developing the best method of removing color from wastewater generated in pulp and paper mills.
“The brownish color in the discharge comes from a compound glue that binds the cellulose together to help make paper,” says Engelhart, one of four Lafayette students honored this year with the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, the premier undergraduate award of its type in the fields of mathematics, science and engineering. “What we don’t know is if the colored water affects how fish navigate, for example. We don’t know if the colored water affects micro-organisms and in turn may affect the food chain.”
Christopher Bashur ’04 (Washington, Pa.) presented research on creation of electrospun fiber scaffolds for use in tissue engineering, which he completed this summer at Virginia Tech through a National Science Foundation program.
Also attending the AIChE meeting were chemical engineering majors Luke Landherr ’03 (Preston, Conn.) and Jessica Whitman ’05 (Fruitland, Md.).
At the American Chemical Society conference, all of the Lafayette student research presented there had been conducted through the EXCEL Scholars program.
Four students shared their work with chemistry professors, including biochemistry majors Alison Campbell ’04 (West Chester, Pa.), a Goldwater recipient, and Joyce Ong ’04(Penang, Malaysia), and chemistry major Kevin Barry ’04 (North Haven, Conn.), who were mentored by Chip Nataro, assistant professor of chemistry. Ong’s project also involved two University of California-San Diego professors, and researchers from UC-San Diego and The Hebrew University in Jerusalem collaborated on Barry’s project.
Biochemistry major Katelyn Connell ’04 (Modena, N.Y.) presented protein research conducted with Yvonne Gindt, assistant professor of chemistry, which could further the understanding of terminal diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Including Barillas, three Lafayette students had their work presented by collaborators. One presentation involved research conducted by neuroscience major and Goldwater recipientMeghan Ramsey ’04 (Lakeville, Minn.) and Gindt in partnership with New York University professors, and another explained research undertaken by Connell, Gindt, and NYU faculty.
Lafayette has gained national recognition for its success in attracting and retaining outstanding women engineering students like Barillas and Engelhart. Last year, women earned about 31% of the bachelor’s degrees the College awarded in engineering. Nationally women make up approximately 19% of engineering B.S. graduates, according to a 2002 National Science Foundation report.
The American Society for Engineering Education featured Lafayette in a cover story of its Prism magazine, entitled “Getting it Right: Attracting Women to Engineering is Tough, but Some Schools Have Found a Formula that Seems to Work.” Prism cites Lafayette among nine engineering schools nationwide that have “excelled in upping the ranks of women in their midst.” The other schools are Michigan State, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Purdue, Tufts, Tulane, and the universities of Colorado and Oklahoma.
In addition, Lafayette received a grant of $151,875 from the National Science Foundation to build on this success and further strengthen recruitment and retention of both women and minority engineering students.
The opportunity to conduct meaningful research with faculty is a major advantage for these students. As a national leader in undergraduate research, Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Over the past five years, more than 130 Lafayette students have presented results from research conducted with faculty mentors, or under their guidance, at the conference.
Lafayette ranks No. 1 among all U.S. colleges that grant only bachelor’s degrees in the number of graduates who went on to earn doctorates in engineering between 1920-1995, according to the Franklin and Marshall College study “Baccalaureate Origins of Doctoral Recipients.”