The fall has brought a bumper crop of accolades for our community of scholars. From early-career promise to lifetime achievements, a breathtaking scope of work was recognized over the past few months. Thanks to those of you who joined us in celebrating Pablo Debenedetti and Bill Schowalter at the AIChE annual meeting.
Meanwhile, the hard work continues. Results reported below show advances toward new biofuels, more effective environmental remediation, and simpler tools for manufacturing. As always, our students stand at the center of this effort, pushing outward, expanding the boundaries of what is possible and what is known. This year marked the department's 30th annual Graduate Student Symposium, an event that brings us all together in one intellectual space and seeds a broad, too easily overlooked conversation—between groups—that so often bears unexpected fruit. I hope you enjoy the read.
Cheers,
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Thanos Panagiotopoulos, Chair
Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Princeton University
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In a development offering great promise for additive manufacturing, researchers from Pierre-Thomas Brun's lab have created a method to precisely create droplets using a jet of liquid. The technique allows manufacturers to quickly generate drops of material, finely control their size and locate them within a 3D space.
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Researchers from Sujit Datta's lab found that in a large class of common granular materials, including clay and human skin, the shrinking of individual grains as they dry strongly influences how these materials crack. Previous work held the size of each grain constant over time, as in sand. But harnessing this previously overlooked trait, called shrinkability, enabled the researchers to predict and even reverse cracking in these materials over time.
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Yeast already helps make bread and beer and cranks out the biofuel ethanol, but engineers believe it can be used to create an even more efficient fuel called isobutanol. Normally, yeast only creates a tiny amount of isobutanol. Now researchers from José Avalos's lab have discovered a genetic switch that significantly ramps up production.
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The 30th Graduate Student Symposium, held October 10-11, featured a full day of high-level research talks and poster presentations, as well as two alumni keynote speakers. A separate day of activities allowed students to engage industry partners in career-oriented conversations. Organization of the two-day event was led by fourth-year students Nancy Lu and Kurt Ristroph.
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Celeste Nelson has been given the Mid-Career Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), the largest and fastest growing professional organization for bioengineers.
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Pablo Debenedetti received the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE)'s Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Chemical Engineering Research. The award cites Debenedetti's "seminal research contributions on the metastable liquid-liquid phase transition and properties of water at supercooled conditions."
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More News . . .
William Schowalter has been honored with an AIChE lectureship in his name, recognizing a career that has spanned seven decades and left an indelible mark on the study of fluid mechanics. The inaugural lecture was given by Michael D. Graham on November 13.
Sujit Datta received a NSF CAREER Award, supporting his research into how bacteria move through porous environments like biological tissues, soils and gels.
Rodney Priestley was awarded the John H. Dillon Medal by the American Physical Society, citing his impactful experiments into complex materials.
Four CBE majors made the most of the Reiner G. Stoll Undergraduate Summer Fellowship, co-authoring papers in major journals and turning independent projects into ongoing thesis research.
A team including Bruce Koel won a five-year, $3-million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study low-temperature plasma, part of a major nationwide initiative on fusion energy.
The Biophysical Society honored Clifford Brangwynne with the Michael and Kate Bárány Award for his "beautiful applications of the principles of soft matter."
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