Alumni Relations
Faculty Highlights
Chemical Engineering News
by Arup Chakraborty, Chair
Continuing Our Mission
|
Chair Arup Chakraborty |
The fall semester has begun with
its usual excitement as new and returning students fill our classrooms
and laboratories. We currently have 391 undergraduate students enrolled
in chemical engineering. The entering graduate class has twenty of the
world’s brightest young chemical engineers, bringing our total graduate
student enrollment to 110. These numbers indicate that your department
continues to be attractive to the best young minds in our discipline.
Budgets are still tight
I am sure you have all heard about the challenging
budgetary situation, and indeed, it has been grim. However, our staff,
faculty, and students have worked very hard to minimize the impact of
the budget cuts on our academic program. I believe that, so far, we have
succeeded in this effort. A major challenge has been in continuing to
develop infrastructure for education and research. Even in this regard,
thanks to your help and support from the administration, we have made
some progress. We have just completed a major renovation project that
has resulted in a state-of-the-art teaching laboratory for our senior
elective in biochemical engineering. We are now striving to create a similar
modern laboratory facility for our mandatory undergraduate laboratory
course on transport phenomena.
Faculty recruiting news
We are also continuing our efforts to recruit
new faculty. Our newest member, Professor Rachel Segalman, arrived
on campus in February. Already her laboratory is a hub of excitement,
and she is teaching her first class this semester. We hope to complete
our recruitment of a senior person for the Hubbard Howe Distinguished
Professorship by the end of this calendar year. We have also started a
recruitment effort that aims to add at least one new assistant professor
to the faculty. These additions will enhance the breadth of educational
opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students in the department.
We are very excited about another
new faculty appointment that has just been approved by the administration.
In 1962, Professor Andreas Acrivos left Berkeley to join the Stanford
faculty. I am happy to report that we have now corrected this situation.
Andy is coming back home, and is going to be an adjunct professor in our
department starting in 2005. With Andy and John Prausnitz both
here to advise us, we will have two of the profession’s leading figures
to provide us with visionary perspectives.
Leading interdisciplinary efforts
In recent years, the campus and Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory have established new interdisciplinary efforts with
a mission to carry out fundamental and applied research on important societal
problems. Examples include the QB3 Institute, which aims to bring engineering,
physical and chemical sciences, and medical research together to address
major health-related issues; CITRIS, which is attempting to use computing
and nanotechnology to alleviate societal problems; the Molecular Foundry,
which will create a unique facility for nanotechnology research; and an
effort in Synthetic Biology, with the goal of taking lessons from nature
to create high-impact products—for instance, inexpensive drugs for diseases
such as malaria. Faculty members from the Department of Chemical Engineering
are playing leading roles in these campus-wide efforts. For example, Jay
Keasling leads the effort on synthetic biology, Roya Maboudian
has a key role in nanotechnology research, and I am the department head
of computational and theoretical biology for LBNL. It is not surprising
that chemical engineering is the nexus of many of these multidisciplinary
efforts, because our discipline integrates information from molecular
to macroscopic scales like no other; thinking across a wide spectrum of
length and time scales is crucial for the success of the initiatives noted
above.
Faculty awards
Our faculty members continue to receive acclaim for
their scholarship. Enrique Iglesia has received the prestigious
George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon Chemistry from the ACS. The award
is given to recognize, encourage, and stimulate outstanding research achievements
in hydrocarbon or petroleum chemistry. Congratulations to Enrique! I was
fortunate to receive the Professional Progress Award of the AIChE, given
to an engineer below the age of 45.
AIChE reception in Austin
As we go to press, we are about to host what should
be a fun reception for alumni and friends on November 9 at the AIChE annual
meeting in Austin, Texas. Also, as always, we enjoy visits and news from
our alumni and count on your advice and help to make your department better.
