Warmest congratulations to Dr. Cato T. Laurencin, the recipient of the 2024 Kathryn C. Hach Award for Entrepreneurial Success as part of the 2024 ACS National Awards! This award recognizes Dr. Laurencin’s outstanding contributions to the world of entrepreneurship, innovation, and scientific leadership. His pioneering work in the field of regenerative engineering and tissue engineering has not only transformed the medical landscape but has also laid the foundation for groundbreaking entrepreneurial endeavors. Read more about Dr. Laurencin and other outstanding recipients of the 2024 ACS National Awards in the Chemical & Engineering News.
Awards
Congratulations to CHEG Undergraduate Change Grant Recipients!
The Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department would like to congratulate Justin Amengual ’22, Emily Miller ’22, Kaylee Walsh ’22, and Alexander Pericolosi ’23 on being recipients of the Fall 2021 Change Grant as part of the UConn Co-op Legacy Fellowship Program! To view the full list of Fall 2021 Change Grant Recipients, please click here.
Professor Cato Laurencin Named 2020 Recipient of MD Anderson Cancer Center Mike Hogg Award
Professor Anson Ma Named Air Force Faculty Fellow
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
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.
Profs. Lei and Srivastava inducted into CASE
Congratulations to Professor Yu Lei and Professor Ranjan Srivastava for their induction into the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. More details may be found via the following link.
Anson Ma Wins Arthur B. Metzner Early Career Award
Republished with permission of Momentum,
a School of Engineering electronic publication.
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
Dr. 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.
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.”