News, Events & CEMS Seminars

DEPARTMENT EVENTS
SPRING 2022 CEMS SEMINAR SCHEDULE
JANUARY & FEBRUARY
Thursday, January 20: Dr. Kumar Varoon Agrawal, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. ZOOM seminar.
During the months of January and February, CEMS will hold numerous faculty candidate seminars. To protect the confidentiality of the search process, the details of those seminars will not be posted on the CEMS website.
MARCH
Tuesday, March 1: Dr. Rufina Alamo, Florida A&M University-Florida State University
Thursday, March 3: faculty candidate seminar
March 7-11: UMN Spring Break, no seminars
March 14-18: APS meeting in Chicago, no seminars
March 20-24: ACS meeting in San Diego, no seminars
Tuesday, March 29: Dr. Chinedum Osuji, University of Pennsylvania
APRIL
Tuesday, April 5: Dr. Christian Pester, Pennsylvania State University
Tuesday, April 19: Dr. Hang Lu, Georgia Institute of Technology
Thursday, April 21: Dr. Srinivas Rangarajan, Lehigh University
Tuesday, April 26: Dr. Ofer Manor, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
CEMS NEWSLETTER
Past Issues
DEPARTMENT NEWS

CEMS graduate student Yutong Pang wins AIChE Travel Award
Posted August 31, 2021
August 31, 2021 - Yutong Pang, a 5th year chemical engineering PhD candidate advised by CEMS Professor Paul Dauenhauer, has won travel award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division (CRE) to support her participation in the 2021 AIChE Annual Meeting.

CEMS Student, Sam Wang recipient of the 2021 Crystal Group Innovation Scholarship
Posted July 21, 2021
July 21, 2021 - Sam Wang (ChE '22) is one of two 2021 recipients of the Crystal Group Innovation Scholarship. During his freshman year, Sam was selected to be a project engineer for Engineers Without Borders and travelled to Paraxaj, Guatemala to implement a water distribution system for a village of natives who did not have access to fresh water. From this experience, Sam found his passion to use engineering to advance society. In his sophomore and junior years, Sam dove into the technology industry working as a process engineer intern at Seagate Technology. In this position he led multimillion-dollar projects with production and R&D teams, achieving sustainability and financial targets for the company.

CSE researchers part of $10M DOE grant to improve ammonia production
Posted July 15, 2021
July 15, 2021 - With support from a recent $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and partners, including the independent nonprofit research institute RTI International, University of Minnesota researchers in the College of Science and Engineering’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials science are part of a new research project aimed at developing and demonstrating novel processes to produce ammonia from intermittent renewable energy.

Graduate student Wan-Ju Hsu receives Renewable Energy Commercialization Fellowship
Posted July 15, 2021
July 15, 2021 - Graduate Student Wan-Ju Hsu, working with Prof. Russell Holmes, has been awarded a $50,000 Renewable Energy Commercialization Fellowship. The fellowship is a joint initiative of the Institute on the Environment and the College of Science and Engineering, in partnership with the UMN MIN-Corps program and the Office of Technology Commercialization, to accelerate technology translation of renewable energy research.

In Memoriam: Lloyd White
Posted July 14, 2021
July 14, 2021- Lloyd R. White (ChE ’59, PhD ’67) died on June 20, 2021 in the Twin Cities at the age of 84 after a brief struggle with AML leukemia.

Ferry named 2021 Institute on the Environment Fellow
Posted June 17, 2021
June 17, 2021 - Associate Professor Vivian Ferry is among seven new Fellows of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment (IonE). Fellows are established in their careers, having demonstrated excellence in one or more subject areas related to the environment and sustainability.

Dauenhauer named a finalist for the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists
Posted June 16, 2021
June 16, 2021 - Professor Paul Dauenhauer is among 31 finalists for the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists, the world’s largest unrestricted prize honoring early-career scientists and engineers. Three winners – in life sciences, chemistry, and physical sciences and engineering – will be announced on July 20, each receiving $250,000 as a Blavatnik National Awards Laureate.

Poerschke leads research team awarded Minnesota Futures Grant
Posted June 9, 2021
June 9, 2021 - CEMS Assistant Professor David Poerschke is the principal investigator on a collaborative research project that was funded as part of the Minnesota Futures Grant Program by the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR). The Minnesota Futures Grant Program offers funding each year to promote research that incorporates new, cross-disciplinary ideas. For the 2021 grant cycle, OVPR awarded a total of $500,000 to two projects.

CEMS graduate student Elisah VandenBussche selected to be an ASME Congressional Fellow
Posted May 24, 2021
May 24, 2021 - Elisah VandenBussche, a fifth-year chemical engineering PhD candidate in the Flannigan group, has been selected as the 2021-2022 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Congressional Fellow representing the area of Energy. She will begin this appointment in September 2021.

CEMS Professor Emeritus Chris Macosko featured in Polymer Engineering & Science
Posted May 19, 2021
May 19, 2021 - CEMS Professor Emeritus Chris Macosko was featured in the April issue of Polymer Engineering & Science (PES), a monthly journal of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), as a prominent, influential figure in polymer research for the past 50 years.