MIT Reports to the President 1997-98
The academic year 1997-98 was one of high productivity. We again were number one amongst chemical engineering departments in the U.S. New and World Report academic survey. We graduated 44 doctoral candidates which is the highest record in six years, together with 44 M.S. students totals 88 advanced degrees. A record research dollar volume of over $22 million was reached to support department research activities.
The Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering combined their administrative units last year into a single Administrative Service Organization (ASO), directed by Ms. Elizabeth Cooper. The ASO has moved to its new and permanent quarters located centrally between the two departments at the 4th floor junction of buildings 16 and 8. The shared functions were expanded to include computer support services.
The department's total undergraduate enrollment stands at 317 students with approximately 100 students per graduating class with an equal balance of men and women. Preregistration for the next year indicates that our class size will continue at the same size.
The graduate student enrollment is stable at 218 students with 167 in the doctoral program and 51 master's students, most of who are in the David H. Koch School of Chemical Engineering Practice. This year we received 435 applications for our graduate program, offered admission to 72 students and had 46 accept our offer. The yield of 63% is the highest of any chemical engineering department.
The David H. Koch School of Chemical Engineering Practice has continued to develop an international flavor with sites in Japan, Germany and France during the past year. In addition, it has served as a model for initiation of a program in Thailand.
The Biotechnology Process Engineering Center (BPEC) has moved from building 20 to the fourth floor of Building 16 into newly renovated facilities and is now fully contiguous with the department. We completed consolidation of Chemical Engineering faculty and students into contiguous space. Prof. Daniel I.C. Wang, the founder of the Center, is retiring as the Director and Prof. Douglas Lauffenburger will assume the BPEC directorship.
Two new faculty have joined the department this year: Professors William Green and Bernhardt Trout. In addition, Dr. Kenneth Beers, a recent graduate from the University of Wisconsin has accepted our offer and will join us as an assistant professor following a post doctoral period at the ETH in Zurich. Prof. Edward Merrill, who continued to teach in the polymer area after his retirement two years ago will retire from teaching at the end of this academic year after a distinguished teaching career.
Our faculty has continued to distinguish themselves during the past year. Professor Robert Brown was named as MIT's next Provost. Three of our faculty have been promoted to associate professor with tenure; these are: Professors Linda Griffith, Gregory Rutlege and Jackie Ying. Amongst the many awards received by our faculty this year are the Lemelson-MIT Prize for Invention and Innovation awarded to Prof. Robert Langer who also gave the Killian Award Lecture this year. Prof. Jack Howard was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa at the University of Haute-Alsace in Mulhouse, France; Prof. Paul Laibinis received a Camille Dryful Teacher-Scholar Award.
UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION
For the year 1991-92, sophomore enrollment was 96, juniors 72, seniors 58, total 226: 1992-93 sophomores 95, juniors 89, seniors 81, total 265; 1993-94 sophomores 115, juniors 90, seniors 84, total 289; 1994-95
sophomores 108, juniors 104, seniors 100, total 312; 1995-96 sophomores 118, juniors 101, seniors 103, total 322; 1996-97 sophomores 87 juniors 121, seniors 110, total, 318; 1997-98 sophomores 97, juniors 90, seniors
130, total 317.
Enrollment has leveled off at about 100 students per class, and we continue to have balanced classes of about equal numbers of men and women. UROP activity remains high, with about one-third of our students participating
each term. Much of this activity is in the biomedical and biochemical areas.
We are continuing our sophomore advising seminars, patterned after the very successful Freshman Seminars. Our sophomores meet with their advisors one per week in the fall term to explore what Chemical Engineering is about
and to get to know each other. Advising loads, as well as teaching loads, remain heavy due to our very high student-to-faculty ratio.
Our Senior curriculum, featuring the Integrated Chemical Engineering subjects 10.490 and 10.491, was honored this spring by vote of the students in an Institute-wide competition with the award of the Big Screw. The
criterion for this award is some mixture of amount learned and time spent, and the Department is pleased to have our efforts on behalf of the students so recognized.
GRADUATE EDUCATION
In the 1990-91 year, Masters enrollment was 59, Doctoral enrollment was 164, total 223; 1991-92, Masters 37, Doctoral 164, total 201; 1992-93 Masters 51, Doctoral 159, total 210; 1993-94, Masters 62, Doctoral 147, total 209; 1994-95, Masters 64, Doctoral 166, total 230; 1995-96, Masters 56, Doctoral 169, total 225. 1996-1997 Masters 64; Doctoral 162; Total 226; new numbers Masters 51, Doctoral 167, Total 218.
The total for 1997-98 includes 62 foreign students, 50 female students, and 10 minority students (not including Asian Americans). Graduate admissions data suggests that graduate enrollment will remain in the low 200s for the next several years.
A total of 34 students participated in the David H. Koch School Of Chemical Engineering Practice School Program during the 1997-98 sessions. This has been a year of flux for the Practice School with the closing of old operations and opening of new stations, at both domestic and international locations. The Dow Station continued year-round operations at the Freeport, TX, site, but will be closing at the end of Summer 1998 at our request because of restrictions placed on the placement of foreign nationalities at the Station. The Dow station is to be replaced by a station at GE Plastics in Mt. Vernon, IN, beginning in Fall 1998. The Merck operations in West Point, PA, ended with the Fall 1997 session, to be replaced by a station at Rhone-Poulenc Central Research facilities in Lyon France. Summer stations were established at Koch Refining Company in Corpus Christi, TX, and at Bayer in Leverkusen, Germany. We also returned to the Mizushima facilities of the Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation in Japan following our very successful operations there last year. The new emphasis on international stations highlights the recognition of the importance of globalization in today's economy, and provides selected students with an exposure to alternative corporate cultures. These stations provided a wide variety of excellent projects and opportunities for the students. Dr. Chris Quinn (Dow) and Dr. John Friedly (Merck, Rhone-Poulenc, Mitsubishi) continued to serve as station directors, while Dr. Barry Johnston, a Senior Lecturer in the Chemical Engineering Department and former Dow Station Director, assumed responsibility for the Koch and Bayer summer stations. Chemical Engineering graduate students Hilton Pryce-Lewis and Alejandro Cano-Ruiz, were appointed as Assistant Station Directors at the Koch and Mitsubishi stations, respectively. Professor T. Alan Hatton continues to direct the Practice School from Cambridge. The Chemical Engineering Practice School program established last year in Thailand for the training of Thai engineers for the local industries has had a successful start; MIT faculty have served in an advisory capacity to assist in the development of this program, which is independent of MIT.
FACULTY NOTES
Professor Robert Armstrong gave a keynote lecture at the XIIth International Congress on Rheology in Quebec in August. Later in the year he gave a keynote lecture at the 50th Annual Conference of the Society of Imaging Science and Technology. He also gave a seminar to the Department of Chemical Engineering at Clemson University and the Department of Macromolecular Science of Case Western.
Professor Paul I. Barton gave an invited lecture at Aspen World, Boston, October 1997. He advised the Dow Chemical Company Materials Science Technical Advisory Board on the topic of flexible plants.
Professor Janos M. Beer has been reappointed to the National Coal Council, the Advisory Council of the Secretary of Energy. He has been awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary.
Professor Daniel Blankschtein was an invited plenary speaker at the "Advanced Technology Conference:Europe",held in London in April 1998,and was also an invited speaker and session chairman at the 12th International Symposium on "Surfactants in Solution",held in Stockholm in June 1998.Professor Blankschtein received the 1998 Outstanding Faculty Award from the graduate students of the Department.
Professor Howard Brenner was an Invited Lecturer at the "Mechanics of Nonlinear Materials" Symposium held in Banff, Canada, as well as at the "13th Canadian Conference on Fluid Mechanics" in Vancouver, Canada. This
was in addition to seminars presented at the University of Michigan, University of Florida, Columbia University and Princeton University. He also served as Chair of the Awards Committee of the National Academy of
Engineering and organized and chaired the John Happel (MIT, 1929) 90th Birthday Festschrift Symposium held in New York City.
Professor Robert A. Brown continued to serve as Dean of Engineering at MIT throughout the academic year 1997-1998 and will become Provost at MIT effective August 1, 1999. He was elected to the Executive Board of the Engineering Dean's Council of the ASEE and served on the InternationalAcademic Advisory Panel (IAAP) to the Government of Singapore. Bob also served as chair of the first "Frontiers of Engineering," meeting sponsored jointly by the US National Academy of Engineering and the German Reseach Association. The meeting was held in Dresden, German in May 1998. Professor Brown also gave the Founders Lecture at the University of Wisconsin in 1998.
Professor Robert E. Cohen presented an invited lecture at the International Conference on Rubbery Materials in Calcutta India in December of 1997. The topic of the lecture was the use of rubbery to toughen thermoplastic materials. In October of 1997 Prof Cohen won the Best Paper award for a lecture delivered at the Society of Plastics Engineers Regional Technical Meeting in Montreal, Canada. In the area of assisting K-12 education in science and technology, Professor Cohen was named to the Board of Trustees of the Advent School, a small, private K-6 school in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. He was also elected to the Board of Directors and named Scientific Advisor to the William and Mary Greve Foundation of New York City.
Professor Charles L. Cooney continues to serve as the Executive Officer of the Department. He was chair of the Institute Committee on Corporate Relations, a member of the Council on Industrial Relations and on the Board of the Community Services Fund. He is the Director of the Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals (CAMP) an industry consortium jointly run with Purdue University to support research on pharmaceutical manufacturing. He was elected to the Board of Astra AB in Stockhom.
Professor William M. Deen completed his graduate textbook, Analysis of Transport Phenomena, which was published by Oxford University Press in February. He gave a seminar in the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Texas at Austin.
Professor Karen K. Gleason was an invited lecturer at the Materials Research Society in San Francisco, the Electrochemical Society Meeting in San Diego and the Advanced Metalization and Interconnect Systems for ULSI Applications, also held in San Diego. Other invited lecture were given at the Semiconductor Safety Association, the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy and at Tokyo Electron Limited (Japan). In August 1998, she will be chairing the Gordon Conference on Diamond Synthesis in Oxford, UK.
Professor William H. Green joined the faculty, and presented invited lectures at the California Institute of Technology, the University of California at Los Angeles, Wayne State University, and the Naval Research Laboratory. His research on chemical kinetic simulations attracted industrial interest, leading to collaborations with Dow, Exxon, and Ford.
Professor Linda G. Griffith gave the ASAIO lecture last spring at the American Society for Artifiical Internal Organs, and was co-chair of the Keystone Symposia on Tissue Engineering in January. She is the PI on a newly-funded $4.5M grant from DARPA to develop tissue-based biosensors; the project involves several faculty from Toxicology, the School of Engineering, the Whitehead Institute, and Harvard Medical School. She is continuing to work with an MIT graduate to commercialize her novel approach for creating in vitro vascularized tissue for applications in vitro drug metabolism and toxicology testing, and high-throughput screening. She was also promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
Professor Paula T. Hammond presented her work on SAMs as Templates for Patterned Ionic Multilayer Films as an invited speaker at the Organic Thin Films Gordon Conference. Her work in this area was featured last fall as an article in The Chemical and Engineering News, and has also been featured in Young Scientist. Prof. Hammond gave invited talks at the 5th NSF Materials Chemistry Workshop, and also took part in a special NSF Workshop on Materials Design and Processing at the Nano and Mesoscales through Self Assembly. She has chaired sessions for the Polymers (East) Gordon Conference, as well as the AIChE Annual Meeting, and has given numerous invited talks at universities and companies.
Professor Jack B. Howard continued to serve as Director of the Center on Airborne Organics which, in July, held a Symposium on "Fine Particles in the Atmosphere". He served on a NASA panel evaluating the design for research facilities on the International Space Station. He was inducted into the University of Kentucky Engineering Hall of Distinction and was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa at University of Haute-Alsace in Mulhouse, France.
Professor T. Alan Hatton continued to serve as Director of the School of Chemical Engineering Practice at MIT, and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Chemical Engineering Practice School program of the King Mongut University of Technology Thonburi in Bangkok, Thailand. He served on the organizing committee of the Engineering Foundation Conference on Separation Technology (October, 1997), and was Vice Chair and Discussion Leader of an NSF Workshop on 'Materials Processing at the Nanoscale Through Self-Assembly' in January, 1997. He is Co-Chair of the 73rd ACS Colloid and Surface Science Symposium to be held at MIT in June 1999 (with Professor Laibinis), and of the second Engineering Foundation Conference on 'Structured Fluids and Interfaces' to be held in January 2000. Invited talks were given at the Department of Chemical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore (September 1997), the Symposium on 'The Energy Industry of the 21st Century: Impact on the Chemical Industry', Tarragona, Spain (October 1997), the Engineering Research Foundation Conference on 'Separation Technology'in Davos, Switzerland (October 1997), and the Osaka University Macromolecular Symposium in Osaka, Japan (June 1998). Professor Hatton served as the US Editor for Colloids and Surfaces A, and on the editorial board of Current Opinion in Colloid and Interface Science, and was appointed to the editorial boards of The Journal of Clean Products and Processes, and of Separation Science and Technology.
Professor Klavs F. Jensen was elected as Chair of the Materials Engineering and Sciences Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers for 1997. He was an invited lecturer at the International Conference on Computational Physics and the Materials Research Society Meeting, as well as workshops on multiscale modeling of materials processing and microfabricated chemical systems. He continues to do collaborative research with M.G. Bawendi (Chemistry) on quantum dot synthesis and devices, and Martin A. Schmidt (EECS) on microfabricated chemical systems.
Professor Paul E. Laibinis received a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 1998 for his research accomplishments and teaching developments. He was an invited speaker at the Engineering Foundation Conference "Surface Characterization of Adsorption and Interfacial Reactions II" and presented invited lectures at Northwestern University, Lehigh University, Wayne State University, and various industrial laboratories. Professor Laibinis serves on the Editorial Board of the journal Colloids and Surfaces A.
Professor Robert S. Langer was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize for Invention and Innovation and the The Nagai Foundation Tokyo International Prize. He gave the following named lectureships: Wagner Lectures (University of Michigan), Ewing Halsell Foundation Lecture (University of Texas), Marcus Memorial Lecture (Washington University), Joseph Stokes, Jr. Lecture (University of Pennsylvania), William J. Rashkind Memorial Lecture (American Heart Association), Leah Lowenstein Lecture (Boston University School of Medicine). Dr. Langer gave the 1998 National Science Foundation Engineering Distinguished Lecture and The Ford Motor Company Distinguished Lecture. He gave the Keynote Lectures at the Society of Biomaterials, Keystone Symposia on Tissue Engineering and Wound Healing, and the IBC Tissue Engineering Conference. Dr. Langer gave Plenary Lectures at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and the National Research Council Forum on the Promise and Dilemna of New Materials.
Professor Douglas Lauffenburger, also Director of the MIT Center for Biomedical Engineering, is serving as President of the Biomedical Engineering Society. In this past academic year he presented the Britton Chance Distinguished Lecture in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and the keynote presentation at the annual Houston Conference on Biomedical Engineering.
Professor Gregory C. Rutledge was promoted to Associate Professor withTenure effective July 1, 1998. Over the past year he organized the secondMultidisciplinary Workshop on Molecular Modeling of Polymers, sponsored by the American Chemical Society, and served as co-chair for the Workshop on Multiscale Materials Modeling, sponsored by the Institute of Theoretical Physics. He also co-taught an ACS short course on molecular modeling of polymers. He presented seven invited lectures to academia and industry and, with two graduate students, received the Best Paper Award of the Plastics Analysis Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers at their annual technical meeting in Toronto. Prof. Rutledge continues to serve on the editorial advisory board for Polymer.
Professor George Stephanopoulos served as the 1997 Chairman of AIChEís CAST (Computing And Systems Technology) Division, and he launched as Founding Editor (with Prof. John Perkins of Imperial College) the Process Systems Engineering Series, Academic Press (Series of Advanced Monographs and Textbooks). He was a keynote speaker at the NATO Advanced Studies Institute on ìNonlinear Model-based Controlî, and he gave seminars at the Chemical Engineering Departments of (i) Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, (ii) University of Missouri-Rolla, (iii) California Institute of Technology, (iv) UCLA, (v) UC-Davis, (vi) University of Toronto, (vii) University of Rhode Island, (viii) University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and (ix) Lehigh University. He was the keynote speaker at (a) the IFAC DYCOPS-5 (Dynamics and Control of Chemical Processes) International Conference, (b) the IFAC LSSí98 (Large-Scale Systems) International Conference, and (c) a symposium organized by Rohm and Haas Company. During 1997 he organized the Technical Advisory Board of Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation for the companyís Petrochemical and Pharmaceutical Divisions. The software system, BatchDesign-Kit, developed in Professor Stephanopoulosí Laboratory for Intelligent Systems to support batch process development in the pharmaceutical, agricultural and specialty chemicals industries, was licensed by Hyprotech Ltd for world-wide marketing and distribution. He continued his association as Honorary Fellow with the Institute of Chemical Engineering and High Temperature Processes, Patras, Greece.
Professor Gregory Stephanopoulos gave the plenary lecture at the 7th intern'l conference on computer applications in biotechnology, Osaka, May 31-June 4, 1998, a keynote address at the ACS-RAFT meeting in San Diego, Nov. 15-18, 1997, and invited lectures at the 6th Cell culture conference (San Diego, Feb7-12, 1998), at the BIO98 symposium of the Tokyo Institute of Tech. (Tokyo, June 5), and at the Foundations of computer aided process applications conference in Snowbird, July 5-10, 1998. He also published a book on Principles and Methods of Metabolic Engineering and launched a new journal on the same topic, Metabolic Engineering, both published by Academic Press.
Professor Bernhardt Trout joined the faculty in January, 1998. He has received a seed grant joint with Professor Jeff Tester and Professor Ken Smith, from the Department of Energy for computational work on hydrate formation. He is the PI on the project. He has given invited lectures at the New England Catalysis Society conference and at Mobil Technology Company.
Professor Daniel I.C. Wang was a keynote lecturer at the Recovery of Biological Products held in Tucson, AZ in October, 1997. Professor Wang delivered this lecture entitled "Awakening of the Dragon: Biotechnology in the People's Republic of China." Professor Wang also delivered the opening lecture at the Biochemical Engineering Conference X at Kananaski, Canada, in May 1997 entitled "The Role of Biochemical Engineering in the New Biotechnology." Professor Wang also participated in the MIT Industrial Performance Center's project where he led the biotechnology team resulting in the book entitled "Made By Hong Kong" which was published in April, 1997. Professor Wang was appointed as the Chairman of the Biotechnology Strategic Review Board in April , 1997 for the Republic of China. Professor Wang has also been invited to be on the International Advisory Committee of the Biotechnology Research Institute of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Professor Jackie Ying received a Union Carbide Innovation Recognition Award in 1998 for her research in the synthesis of novel nanostructured catalysts. She delivered 12 invited lectures at various international conferences and national meetings during the past year, including the 4th International Conference on Nanostructured Materials in Stockholm and the 9th World Ceramics Congress and Forum on New Materials in Florence. She was named the Ernest W. Thiele Lecturer at University of Notre Dame, and was an invited seminar speaker at Tsinghua University, ...cole Polytechnique FÈdÈrale de Lausanne, Lehigh University and Rutgers University. Prof. Ying was recently elected to serve as the Chair of the Ceramics Area for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and appointed to the Editorial Board of Journal of Nanoparticle Research. She guest edited a special volume on "Sol-Gel Derived Materials" for Chemistry of Materials and a special volume on "Advanced Ceramic Processing" for the AIChE Journal.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
BIOTECHNOLOGY PROCESS ENGINEERING CENTER
Integrating molecular cell biology and chemical engineering approaches toward effective production and delivery of biotechnology-based therapeutics is the central theme of BPEC as an NSF Engineering Research Center. A new thrust has been added in the area of therapeutic gene biotechnology, or "gene therapy". The work in this thrust is aimed at understanding fundamental principles underlying enabling breakthroughs in effective gene delivery vehicles. One major facet of this thrust is stem cell culture engineering, to learn how to expand cycling stem cells in culture bioreators to ultimately serve as gene transfection targets to be reimplanted into patients. A second facet is solving problems inherent in retroviral expression, such as instability and silencing. A third facet is creation of synthetic molecular-conjugate vehicles for plasmid delivery into cells either in vitro or in vivo, overcoming barriers currently limiting efficiency. The fourth facet is regulation of delivered transgenes by means of small-molecule control of transcription and translation.
This therapeutic gene biotechnology thrust complements the previously-established thrust in therapeutic protein biotechnology, which emphasizes advances in mammalian cell culture engineering and protein stability, formulation, and delivery. Major facets of this ongoing thrust include strategies for maximizing cell productivity and minimizing cell death in bioreactors, preventing oxidative damage to proteins, understanding issues in protein folding versus aggregation, and inventing novel delivery modes.
BPEC comprises more than a dozen investigators from the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Biology, and Chemistry and the new Division of Bioengineering & Environmental Health.
MICROFABRICATED CHEMICAL SYSTEMS: MICROREACTORS
Microfabricated chemical systems have applications both for microanalysis and chemical production. For industrial applications, they offer improved chemical performance in terms of conversion and selectivity, distributed point-of-use chemical manufacturing, and shorter development time from laboratory to commercial production. Moreover, the increased surface-to-volume ratio and heat and mass transfer characteristics introduce the potential for improved process conditions generally not accessible in conventional reactors because of the danger of thermal runaway reactions. Microfabrication could change chemical plant design from classical scale-up to ìscale-outî by replication. Conventional reactor scale-up entails going from laboratory scale to a single large reactor unit through a series of costly laboratory experiments, pilot plant stages, and simulations. Scale-out should be less expensive and faster since each reactor in the scaled-up unit would behave as it did in individual reactor testing. Microreactors may also be useful in process development as test platforms for new catalysts and process chemistry. These experiments could either form the basis for subsequent scale-out, or provide chemical kinetics data essential for scale-up to large process units.
In collaboration with Professor Martin A. Schmidt (EECS), Professor Jensenís laboratory is exploring fabrication, testing, integration and scale-up of microfluidic systems for chemical processing, specifically, reaction systems involving highly reactive compounds. As part of this effort, micro-reactors for high temperature gas-phase reactions, as well as for fast liquid- and gas-liquid phase reactions, are being developed. Another major focus is the development of packaging and control strategies for the scale-up of individual micro-reactors into large numbers of reactors operating in parallel to produce chemical products in larger volumes. The group has fabricated prototype micro-reactors for partial oxidation reactions with on-chip flow sensors, heaters and temperature sensors. Micro-reactor operation was demonstrated for model reaction systems, specifically, the oxidation of hydrocarbons and ammonia over a platinum catalyst. Investigations of ignition and extinction behavior, as a function of heater and inlet gas composition, showed that efficient heat transfer and free-radical quenching characteristics arising from the small dimensions, provided for new and safer operation regimes relative to conventional reactors.
The group uses its previous experience with modeling conventional chemical reactors, as well as semiconductor fabrication processes at both the wafer and feature scale level, to develop two- and three- dimensional finite element simulation tools for microchemical systems. These methods have been constructed with the dual objectives of evaluating micro-chemical reactor performance relative to that for conventional reactor designs, and providing design tools for micro-chemical reactor experiments. Ongoing efforts include microreactors for screening of catalysts for liquid phase and gas phase processes. Alternative fabrication techniques to silicon microfabrication are also being pursued, including fabrication of polymer and ceramics based systems.
POLYMER RESEARCH
The newest frontier in the fields of polymer and materials science is the exploration and manipulation of self-assembly - the natural tendency of some materials to self-arrange due to thermodynamic driving forces and non-covalent secondary interactions. The basis of the Hammond research program is the molecular design and synthesis of self-assembling polymeric systems, and the variation of chemical structure and processing of these systems to control their order and function on both a nanoscopic and microscopic level. These materials include block copolymers, dendrimers, and ultrathin polymer films.
The Hammond group has demonstrated a new technique for patterning polymer thin films using the manipulation of surface functionality and the layer-by-layer adsorption technique. This work was the first to show that by altering the surface functionality within a pattern, and the adsorption conditions of polyelectrolytes, one can actually vary the places in the pattern where polymer adsorbs. This development has been well received, and presents promising technical significance in electro-optical, microelectronic, and biosensor applications. The group is currently taking advantage of this regional control of deposition to build up complex, multi-component, three dimensional microstructures on the surface. Recent highlights include the use of this method to form micron scale electroluminescent patterned diodes.
Dr. Hammond's group has also designed several new liquid crystalline multiphase polymers, and completed morphological and property studies which have contributed to the understanding of the role of the liquid crystalline mesophase in LC micro- phase segregated polymer systems. Recently, it has been demonstrated that LC order can directly influence the block copolymer morphology, and that this influence may actually be "designed into" the block copolymer by varying the LC volume fraction and the overall molecular weight. This new area of research presents a new approach to stabilized liquid crystalline display materials, and could lead the way to new elastomeric piezoelectric and mechano-optic materials.
Finally, the Hammond research group has begun explorations of dendrimeric hyperbranched polymers as membranes and delivery systems. The approach is to use linear/dendrimer diblock copolymer with amphiphilic properties. In this case, self-assembly of two different types is being actively pursued: polymer thin films formed at the air-water interface using Langmuir-Blodgett technology, and the self-assembled structure of bulk block copolymer films, which form nanoscale domains.
DEPARTMENTAL AWARDS
The Chemical Engineering Department's annual Awards Ceremony was held on Monday, May 11, 1998 in Gilliland Auditorium with Professor and Department Head Robert C. Armstrong presiding. The following awards were presented:
In conjunction with the Student Financial Aid Office, an Amoco Foundation Undergraduate Scholarship was acknowledged for recipient Todd C. Bailey, a senior from Somerville, MA; the James E. Cunningham '57
Scholarship to Celeste M. Nelson, a senior from Denver, CO; and the John H. Dessauer Scholarship to Alisha L. Sieminski, a senior from Everett, WA.
Merck Fellowships were acknowledged for recipients Lisa Y. Hwang, a junior from Duncanville, TX and Benjamin D. Martens, a sophomore from Concordia, MO. A host of honors were noted for Robert B. Gray, a senior from Columbia, SC, including his recent awarding of a Marshall Scholarship.
The Dow Chemical Company Outstanding Junior Award recipient was Kevin T. Musselwhite, a junior from Madison, MS, for his balanced record of achievement in academics and campus professional and social organizations, as well as work experience.
The Robert T. Haslam Cup was awarded to Eric D. Nelson, a senior from Brookline, MA, for outstanding professional promise in chemical engineering.
The Roger de Friez Hunneman Prize, the oldest prize in the department (begun in 1927), was awarded to Weiyang Cheong, a senior from Singapore, in recognition of outstanding scholarship and research.
The Edward W. Merrill Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award was presented to Andrey Zarur, a graduate student from Mexico, for excellence in teaching in an undergraduate subject. A second place award went to Rebecca L. Carrier, a graduate student from Bolton, CT.
Chemical Engineering Department Special Service Awards were given to David M. DeWitt, a graduate student from Albuquerque, NM, Ann E. Schmitz, a graduate student from Marquette Heights, IL, and Samantha L. Lavery, a senior from Livonia, MI, for their unselfish contributions to the success of departmental activities.
The Chemical Engineering "ROCK" Award for outstanding athletics, as voted by the graduate students of the department, went to S. Patrick Walton, a graduate student from Cambridge, MA and David M. DeWitt (see above). 1998 was the 25th offering of this prestigious award!
The Outstanding Employee Award was presented to Emmi L. Snyder, an Administrative Secretary in the Chemical Engineering Departmental Headquarters, for her exceptional service to the departmental faculty, staff, and students.
The Outstanding Faculty Award from the graduate students was presented to Professor Daniel Blankschtein. Undergraduate students in the department presented an Outstanding Faculty Award to Professor C. Michael Mohr.
Individual Accomplishment Citations were presented to Jean Francois Hamel, Research Engineering and Lecturer, and Joan A. Chisholm Administrative Secretary, for their outstanding contributions to departmental life. Hamel and Chisholm were recipients of the third offering of this special award, and each received a personalized citation signed by the Department Head.
Robert C. Armstrong