Brian Carrick wins 1st place in AIChE competition

Brian Carrick, a junior undergraduate student double majoring in chemical engineering and chemistry, tied for first place in the 2020 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Student Technical Presentation Competition, which took place on November 16, during the Annual Student Conference. Landon Ebbert from Brigham Young University tied Carrick in the competition.

Carrick has been working as an undergraduate researcher in Professor Timothy Lodge’s laboratory to explore the lower critical solution temperature phase behavior of poly(benzyl methacrylate) in an ionic liquid. This unique behavior is unable to be predicted by the traditional polymer solution theory due to the formation of clathrates via cation-pi interactions. Carrick’s AIChE Student Technical Presentation focused on the approximation of the binodal, or coexistence, curve for this system as well as exploring the reversibility of the system's phase separation behavior. He worked on this project this past summer as a Department of Chemistry Summer Research Fellowship recipient. 

In addition to conducting undergraduate research, Carrick serves as AIChE vice president for the UMN student chapter and Tau Beta Pi secretary. Carrick is a member of the University of Minnesota Honors Program.