THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN • COCKRELL SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING. DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Professor Thomas F. Edgar, a chemical engineer with extensive teaching, administrative, research and industry experience, has been named interim director of the Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin.

Edgar’s appointment as interim director, effective Jan. 15, will be for a period of one year, during which time the university will determine … Read the rest »

Lydia Contreras has won a 2013 Air Force Young Investigator Award for her work on radiation-activated RNA switches for novel sensing technologies.  Contreras is one of 40 scientists and engineers selected in the $15 million dollar program for early career investigators that show exceptional ability and promise for conducting research.

“How to detect biological and … Read the rest »

Nicholas A. Peppas, chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, will receive the Billy and Claude R. Hocott Distinguished Centennial Engineering Research Award, which is awarded to a faculty member whose documented research has significantly advanced the engineering profession.

He is the leading researcher in the … Read the rest »

Cara Touretzky has won the Directors’ Student Presentation Award from the Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).

Touretzky’s paper,“Modeling and Model Predictive Control Strategies for Building Energy Management,” earned her the honor and was co-authored by her advisor, Professor Michael Baldea.  The paper presents a … Read the rest »

Department Financial Analyst Teri Sahba was awarded the 2012 Ruth Crawford Staff Excellence Award at the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering Holiday Banquet December 14 at the Headliners Club in Austin.

The annual award is named after former senior staff member Ruth Crawford who devoted thirty years of exemplary service to the department working for … Read the rest »

Professors Grant Willson and S.V. Sreenivasan received the Inventor of the Year award for developing a nanolithography process used for manufacturing computer chips, hard drives and other electronic components

Hal Alper has won the 2013 Biotechnology and Bioengineering Daniel I.C. Wang Award for his research in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology.  The award is presented by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering.  The award recognizes a young member of the biotechnology/bioengineering academic community for commitment to the journal and the … Read the rest »

John Ekerdt, associate dean for research in the Cockrell School of Engineering and professor of chemical engineering, has been elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Fellows are chosen annually by their peers to recognize their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.

Ekerdt was … Read the rest »

Nicholas A. Peppas, chairman of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and professor of chemical engineering, biomedical engineering and pharmacy, was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Ljubljana Dec. 4 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Attendees of the official ceremony included the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr.  Danilo Türk, the President of the Slovenian Academy of Science, … Read the rest »

Undergraduate Julie Fogarty won the Commended Synthetic Biology Presentation Award at Rice University’s Regional Undergraduate Chemistry and Biochemistry & Cell Biology Symposium. Her winning presentation was titled ”Engineering Low Affinity Protein-Protein Interactions by Functional Presentation on the Phage Coat Protein P8.”

“I am extremely honored to win this award,” said Fogarty. ”This was my first major scientific presentation outside … Read the rest »