Thirteenth Annual Graduate Research Symposium

October 29, 2014

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering graduate students and members of the Graduate Student Advisory Council organized the 13th annual graduate research symposium that took place October 24.

During the symposium there were 11 poster presentations and 10 oral presentations given by students. Those presentations were judged by two chemical engineering alumni who returned to their alma mater: Dr. Amit Kulkarni (’01 PhD, Advisor: Dr. Charles Zukoski) from GE and Dr. Rahul Keswani (’12 PhD, Advisor: Dr. Dan Pack) from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

This year’s winners of the 13th annual Graduate Symposium are:

Poster Presentations

(from left to right: Professor Hong Yang, Joseph Whittenberg, and Professor Jon Higdon. Photo by Qilong Huang — (From left to right: Professor Hong Yang, Joseph Whittenberg, and Professor Jon Higdon. Photo by Qilong Huang.

First Place: Joe Whittenberg, Advisor: Professor Paul Kenis, Microreactors for click chemistry-based synthesis of molecular imaging probes.

Second Place: Ankur Taneja, Advisor Professor Jon Higdon, Unified approach for function based geologic modeling, simulation reservoir and production history matching.

Third Place: Yelena Ilin, Advisor Professor Mary Kraft, Identifying the differentiation and cell cycle state of hematopoietic stem cells using Raman Spectroscopy.

Oral Presentations

from left to right: Professor Hong Yang, Vivek Kumar, and Professor Jon Higdon Photo by Qilong Huang — From left to right: Professor Hong Yang, Vivek Kumar, and Professor Jon Higdon. Photo by Qilong Huang.

First Place (tie): Vivek Kumar, Advisor Professor Paul Kenis, Development of high-throughput reactors for continuous synthesis of semiconductor nanoparticles; and Tong Si, Advisor Huimin Zhao, Enabling multiplex genome engineering in yeast by RNAi and CRISPR.

Third Place: Ming Li, Advisor Professor Ed Seebauer, Control of point defect behavior in metal oxides via surface band bending.

Tong giving his talk. Photo by Qilong Huang.

Other graduate students who participated in this year’s symposium are: Poster Presentations: Sam Hamedi Rad, Vahid Mirshafiee, Shuyan Zhang, Eitan Barlaz, Xi Yin, Zehua Bao, Steven Warren and Kai-Wen Hsiao. Oral Presentations: Geethika Yalamanchili, Jiazhang Lian, Laura Mozdzen, Jinrong Chen, Yung-Tin Pan, Samantha Weiss and Daniel Reilly.