Congratulations to Professors Bill Hammack and Baron Peters, both recently invested as William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professors in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Baron Peters joined the Illinois faculty in January 2019. His research includes developing fundamental new methods in rare events modeling to understand catalytic and chemical reaction pathways. He studies reactions between charged species in solution, which is an open and fertile area of research with key applications to energy and the food/water nexus. He specifically aims to understand whether a single universal solvent reaction coordinate (e.g., a unifying theme) can be applied to reactions involving charge transfer with atoms in fixed positions, atom migration with fixed charges, and coupled charge transfer and atom migration. In a second area, he studies nucleation and growth using simulations that accurately capture multiple species including solutes, solvents, surfactants, and nucleants.
Professor Peters graduated from the University of Missouri, Columbia, in 1999, with a BS in Mathematics and Chemical Engineering. In 2004, he earned a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
For decades, the EngineerGuy, a.k.a. Professor William S. Hammack, has been enlightening people with his videos, radio commentaries, books, and courses. He is a pioneer of new and novel approaches to engineering outreach. He received his BS in Chemical Engineering from Michigan Technological University in 1984 and his MS and PhD from the University of Illinois in 1986 and 1988, studying intramolecular electron transfer under the late Professor Harry Drickamer. Prof. Hammack taught at Carnegie Mellon for a decade before returning to Illinois and joining the chemical engineering faculty in 1998.
From 1999 to 2006, Hammack created a groundbreaking series of over 200 pieces for public radio that described what engineers do, why they do it, and how. He also created and is host of the popular YouTube channel “engineerguyvideo.” His YouTube videos and pieces for public radio have been seen or heard millions of times around the world.