Awards

Professor Cato Laurencin Named 2020 Recipient of MD Anderson Cancer Center Mike Hogg Award

Professor Cato Laurencin
The Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department would like to congratulate Professor Cato Laurencin on being named the 2020 Recipient of the MD Anderson Cancer Center Mike Hogg award. More information on Dr. Laurencin's work and this award can be found here.

Professor Anson Ma Named Air Force Faculty Fellow

Assistant Professor Anson W. Ma (Photo courtesy of Peter Morenus/UConn)

The Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department would like to congratulate Professor Anson Ma on receiving this prestigious fellowship. More information regarding this fellowship and how it relates to his research can be found here.

Prof. Radenka Maric Recognized for 2020 Women in Business Award

Prof. Maric

CBE Professor and UConn Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, Dr. Radenka Maric, has been recognized by the Hartford Business Journal with a 2020 Women in Business Award, along with 14 other amazing women. The reasons she was particularly chosen for this honor are described here. Congratulations Radenka to you and all of your co-awardees!

Dr. Wagstrom Receives NSF CAREER Award for Evaluating Air Pollution in Hartford Neighborhoods

 

Kristina Wagstrom, Eversource Energy Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering Education at the University of Connecticut, received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for a project that will evaluate air pollution in various neighborhoods in Hartford. 

The five year, $500,000  project entitled  “Engaging Communities to Bridge the Local to Regional Gap in Air Pollution Exposure Assessment” began in June 2018. Wagstrom and students in one of her service learning elective courses will be working with various neighborhoods in Hartford to tackle issues of near road air pollution. They will develop recommendations for individuals, communities, and policy changes to mitigate the impact of air pollution.   

“The motivation behind this project is to provide ways to better understand real world air pollution exposures and take into account near road exposures,” She said.   

One part of the project will involve monitoring air pollution in Hartford using low cost equipment. Wagstrom said that for every year of the project researchers will partner with different neighborhood associations in Hartford to do modelling and monitoring of air pollution in that neighborhood. Citizen will able to set up some monitors themselves as well.   

Wagstrom said the project will focus on using a hybrid modeling approach that will yield better estimates of air pollutant concentrations than other models. 

“A lot of the actual effort on the project is developing this complex new model,” Wagstrom said “The goal is to provide a tool that can be used anywhere to provide better air pollution estimates that can then be used to make recommendations to people about how they might want to change their own activity and make recommendations to communities and city planners about better ways of planning urban areas.”   

She said the new modeling system will allow them to better estimate, for example, the difference between walking or biking down one road versus another during different times of day. 

“So really giving us much better estimates to what your air pollution exposure would look like given different activity patterns. Different ways of going about your life day to day,” Wagstrom said. 

 

Article by Sarah Al-Arshani 

Photography by Peter Morenus

CBE Congratulates Dr. Lei on His New Appointment to a Centennial Term Professorship in the School of Engineering

Professor Yu Lei, Chemical and Biomelcular Engineering, has been chosen for appointment to a Centennial Term Professorship in the School of Engineering. The Centennial Term Professorships, established through an anonymous donation of $1 million, are aimed at recognizing outstanding faculty members who have left a lasting impact on the School of Engineering through leadership and innovation in teaching, research, mentorship, engagement, and institution building.

Dr. Lei received his Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of California-Riverside. He joined UConn’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2006.  Dr. Lei is a well-acknowledged expert in the areas of chemical and biological sensors. The primary area of Professor Lei’s research is to develop novel, simple, cost-effective, ultrasensitive, and universal (bio)sensor and/or nanomaterial-based sensor platforms for the detection of biological and chemical species, which combine the principles of chemical engineering, nanotechnology and molecular biology for homeland security, environmental, energy and biomedical monitoring.

Dr. Lei is an elected Fellow of American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE). He is a licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.) in Chemical Engineering and was a recipient of UConn School of Engineering Dean’s Excellence Award in 2016. Dr. Lei has over 140 peer-reviewed journal publications, 3 invited book chapters, and more than 10 patents/disclosures.

Anson Ma Wins Arthur B. Metzner Early Career Award

Momentum logoRepublished with permission of Momentum,

a School of Engineering electronic publication.

 

Anson_profile2013

Anson Ma, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Institute of Materials Science, has been awarded the prestigious Arthur B. Metzner Early Career Award.

The award, which comes with a plaque and a $7,500 honorarium, goes to a young person who has made significant accomplishments in rheology, which is the study of the flow of matter.

Ma was nominated by Malcolm Mackley, Emeritus Professor at Cambridge University, who worked with Ma from 2005 to 2009 on the rheology of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) suspended in epoxy and acrylic resins. In his nomination, Mackley wrote:

Anson, with his meticulous approach to science and rheology made sense of difficult experiments. Working together with Prof Paco Chinesta, who is now at Ecole Centrale des Nantes, Anson was the glue that made the link between experiment and some high level suspension rheological modeling.

At UConn, Ma and his team apply experimental and theoretical rheology to a broad range of important application areas. Since 2011, Ma has supervised three postdoctoral fellows, four PhD students, and three visiting students from France. He has also hosted 21 undergraduate students, three high school teachers, and eight
minority high school students to provide them with early research experience related to rheology. To engage younger students and the local community, Ma has chosen food science and, more specifically, rheology of culinary foams and emulsions as the theme for his outreach plan.

Bollas Receives Mentorship Excellence Award

By Sydney Souder

Photo of Dr. Bollas speaking at 2015 Frontiers for Undergraduate Research Poster Exhibition after receiving his Mentorship Excellence AwardDr. George Bollas, Assistant Professor of the CBE Department, is the first recipient of the Office of Undergraduate Research’s (OUR) Faculty Mentorship Excellence Award. He received the award at the 18th Annual Frontiers in Undergraduate Research Poster Exhibition on Friday, April 10, 2015.

With this award, OUR recognizes the critically significant role that mentors play in supporting their undergraduates’ research and creative activity. A committee of OUR Peer Research Ambassadors selected one faculty recipient and one graduate student for the Mentorship Excellence Award recognizing their dedication to their students.Photo of Dr. Bollas with the undergraduate mentees who nominated him (from left): Clarke Palmer, '16 (ENG), Oscar Nordness '15 (ENG), Ari Fischer '15 (ENG).

Ari Fischer, one of his mentees who contributed to his nomination, presented the plaque to Dr. Bollas. Fischer commended Dr. Bollas’ extraordinary commitment to challenging and supporting his students. He attributes Dr. Bollas’ influence to helping his mentees achieve their research, personal, and professional goals. Dr. Bollas has helped his students formulate their own research projects, apply for fellowships and publish their own work.

Bollas’ current research group consists of seven Ph.D. students, one Masters student, and 10 undergraduates. Fischer asserts that Dr. Bollas’s dedication is not limited to just those in his lab, but to all of his students; he pushes them to get the most out of their education.

Although honored by his new plaque, Dr. Bollas explained what he considers his real prize. “At the end of the day we’re given the opportunity to spend time with these amazing, fresh minds hungry for knowledge and work, and that is what is most rewarding.”

 

CBE Professor Receives Women of Innovation Award

By Sydney Souder

DMaricCaption2r. Radenka Maric, Connecticut Clean Energy Professor in Sustainable Energy in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, was honored with the Research Innovation & Leadership Award at the Women of Innovation awards ceremony on April 1, 2015.

Fifty-six finalists were honored for their innovation and leadership at the Connecticut Technology Council’s eleventh annual celebration. The Women of Innovation awards gala recognizes women accomplished in science, technology, engineering, math, and also involved in their community. The event allows like-minded, successful women to celebrate their accomplishments together.

Ten of the finalists were announced as award winners during the event. Winners were chosen in eight categories. The Research Innovation & Leadership Award won by Dr. Maric is presented to a woman who has developed new knowledge or products, or improvements to products in a corporate or academic setting through original approaches to research. The Research Innovation and Leadership recipient also exhibits leadership ability by leading research teams, motivating staff and securing funding or resources to enable her research program.

Dr. Maric’s research innovation and leadership is remarkable. She is internationally recognized for her contributions in sustainable energy technologies supporting the development of efficient, fuel cell-powered vehicles; nanomaterials; and manufacturability. Dr. Maric’s research interests include: synthesis of nanomaterials, unique new materials and associated processes, catalysis, kinetics, electrochemical cell design and architecture, new analytical and diagnostic techniques, fuel cell and battery systems, alternative electrochemical fuels and reactant modification, hydrogen production and storage, and sensor technology.

“I look forward to continuing my work in research, teaching, and outreach here at the University of Connecticut,” says Dr.  Maric.

Danica Chin ’13 Named A 2015 STEP Award Emerging Leader

Momentum logoRepublished with permission of Momentum,

a School of Engineering electronic publication.

 

 

Danica Chin CaptionDanica Chin ’13, has been named a 2015 STEP Award Emerging Leader by The Manufacturing Institute and featured in the most recent issue of  Diversity Woman Magazine.

Soon after graduating with a Chemical Engineering degree, Chin started working at Bayer MaterialScience in Sheffield, MA. A native of Stratford, CT, Chin entered the BRIDGE program when she came to UConn, which prepares underrepresented students for the engineering curriculum with an intensive five weeks of studying mathematics, chemistry, physics and computer programming.

“I loved BRIDGE,” she said. “It was important because it did so much for me. It introduced me to topics I had never known before.” Not having had classes in computer science and physics in high school, she said, the extra programs gave her an advantage.

“I knew what I was getting involved in when the Fall semester arrived.”

She now works as a process engineer at Bayer MaterialScience.

“I love it at Bayer,” she said. “They’re all real supportive of what I want to do. My boss is very open to things that I want to work on. I  make sure our production lines are working properly and that the equipment is running properly. It’s like a small company within a company, and I’m the owner.”

She said the STEP Award and being featured in the magazine are all the more rewarding because of the obstacles that she faced along the way, particularly an anxiety disorder that made taking tests a struggle. But she persisted, got through school and is now in a leadership position at a major company.

“I just think it’s important to let people know that they can do it, even with obstacles in the way,” she said.