News

The Bourns College of Engineering Leadership Council would like to congratulate the following UCR engineering student organizations for winning Fall 2005 Club Awards: The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and Tau Beta Pi (TBP), the national engineering honor society. The awards signify that these clubs displayed an exemplary amount of activity, organization, responsibility, and communication with the College of Engineering Leadership Council during Fall Quarter, according to Megan Nix, the Chair of the Council. Pictured is the Freshman Fall Welcome, presented by the College’s clubs.

Research on carbon nanotubes being performed independently at UCR’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering, Stanford University and University of Texas at Dallas has been designated number 8 in Discover Magazine’s 100 most important science stories of 2005. The story reports on research developed by Center Director Robert Haddon’s team that has the potential for speeding up the healing of broken bones. CNSE researchers demonstrated how the bone-forming mineral hydroxyapatite will grow around a carbon nanotube scaffold serving as a replacement for collagen fibrils. Nanotubes are light in weight and nine times stronger than steel. Haddon explained that bone needs to be strong but a little bit flexible. “Since bone is a composite mixture of organic and inorganic material, the nanotubes make an excellent replacement for the organic part,” he added. The new technique, first published in the American Chemical Society’s journal Chemistry of Materials, received national and international attention from the media. Pictured is a clump of bone-forming mineral seeded by carbon nanotubes.

Sathyajith Ravindran, Ph.D. student of Cengiz S. Ozkan, has won a Graduate Research Award of $1,000. Sathyajith has also received an offer from Intel Santa Clara for a grade 7 senior process engineer. He will be working in the lithography department at the California Technology Manufacturing Group in Santa Clara, CA. He will be working on Intel's latest flash memory process. Congratulations!

Assistant Professor Mihri Ozkan received a $100,000 check from representatives of Riverside Public Utilities on Tuesday, August 31. At last year's Bourns College of Engineering Industry Day, attendees from the company heard a presentation by Professor Ozkan on applications of nanotechnology in engineering and biology, and were able to access funds set aside for energy research to support her work on the development of next-generation, energy-saving LEDs (light-emitting displays). Dr. Ozkan's device shows 20 times the efficiency and half the turn-on voltage than earlier devices built with the same materials. Pictured left to right are Riverside Public Utilities Principal Programs & Services Representative Michael Bacich, Prof. Ozkan, Public Benefits/Business Relations Manager Atoya Mendez and Programs & Services Representative Jarred Ross.

The research on hybrid inorganic-organic molecular beacons by Professor Mihri Ozkan's Biomedical Sciences and Technology group has been featured on the cover of the current issue of Sensor Letters Journal. Dr. Dimitrios Morikis, associate researcher in the Chemical & Environmental Engineering Department, created the 3-D molecular modeling, pictured at left. He, Dr. Ozkan and graduate students Joong Hyun Kim and Jared Stephens co-authored the research paper published in the journal. The new probes provide multiplexed imaging of specific DNA and RNA sequences. They can be used for the detection of viruses, bacteria or disease markers in humans.

Sunny Wang (Graduate student of Chemical and Environmental Engineering) has recently been given two awards. He won First Prize in the Student Paper Contest at the 2004 North American Membrane Society Annual Meeting in Honolulu, HI for his oral presentation entitled "Using Critical Flux and Back-Pulsing to Control MF/UF Membrane Fouling." In addition, he was also recently awarded a Certificate of Merit from the Environmental Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society for his oral presentation, "BACK-PULSE OPTIMIZATION FOR FOULING FREE MICROFILTRATION" at the 227th ACS National Meeting in Anaheim, CA.

Chemical & Environmental Engineering Associate Professor Yushan Yan's research for Pacific Fuel Cell Corp. has been selected to receive a Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the Department of Energy. These research and development grants fund projects involving small businesses working with nonprofit research institutions. In conventional fuel cells, membranes fail at elevated temperatures; Yan's team is developing a nanomaterial-based composite membrane which can retain high proton conductivity and mechanical strength at elevated temperatures, for enhanced power output.

Several new appointments have been announced at the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering. Mark Matsumoto is serving as Interim Dean, following the departure of former Dean Satish Tripathi to become Provost at the University at Buffalo. Dr. Matsumoto (pictured at right) will serve in this position while the search for a new Dean is in progress. Professor Chinya Ravishankar is Acting Associate Dean for Student Affairs, the title previously held by Dean Matsumoto. Financial and Administrative Manager Lois Bell has retired after twenty years of service with University of California; her duties will be assumed by Patrick Hartney, who has been appointed Assistant Dean for Finance and Administration. Hartney held a similar position at CE-CERT (College of Engineering - Center for Environmental Research and Technology). Professor Marc Deshusses is the new Chair of the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering.

Sara Kelcher and James Robertson received the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns Award at the UC Riverside 2004 Commencement Awards Ceremony on Friday, June 11. Each of UCR’s colleges annually selects an outstanding male and female graduate. The College of Engineering named the award to honor Marlan and Rosemary Bourns for their outstanding contributions to the College, the inland Southern California region, and industry. Both students graduated Summa Cum Laude and participated in numerous extracurricular activities. Dean Satish K.Tripathi presented the awards and is pictured with Robertson (left) and Kelcher (right).

Dimitrios Morikis, Associate Researcher with the Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, has been selected to receive UC Riverside’s Non-Senate Distinguished Researcher Award for 2003-2004. Dr. Morikis follows a cross-disciplinary theoretical and experimental approach in his research, involving biophysics, structural biology, computational chemistry and structural bioinformatics.

Chemical & Environmental Engineering Professor Yushan Yan has received a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation as the Principal Investigator for the Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) project, titled “Zeolite Nanoparticles: Energy, Environment and Microelectronics”. UCR is leading the four-year project, in partnership with Caltech, Rice University and Los Alamos National Lab.

Professor Yan has also received a renewed research agreement from Pacific Fuel Cell Corp. for his research on carbon nanotube fuel cells; matching funds will be provided through a UC Discovery grant. The corporation is establishing a laboratory in UCR’s University Research Park for development of the commercial version of the carbon nanotube fuel cell.

Sara Kelcher, a Chemical Engineering senior, received a 2004 Student Scholarship Award from AIChE (American Society of Chemical Engineers). She was nominated by the Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering at UCR The award was given in recognition of her excellent achievement in areas if academics, extracurricular activities and AIChE involvement. Sara is Co-President of the student chapter of AIChE.

A delegation from Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology (K-JIST), a Korean university comparable to MIT, visited UC Riverside on Wednesday, March 3 to explore expanding the existing relationship (between the Departments of Chemical & Environmental Engineering and Environmental Sciences at UCR and the Environmental Science and Engineering department at K-JIST) to include other departments at both institutions. This collaboration is one of the one of the first relationships the College of Engineering has established with a major international university.

During the day, representatives met with Dean Satish K. Tripathi and faculty members Ashok Mulchandani, Robert Haddon, Jie Chen, Shankar Mahalingham and Mart Molle, and visited K-JIST students studying here as part of the collaboration. Theses students, So Young Kang, Jin Hyung Lee and Jung Hun Song, are working with CEE professors Mihri Ozkan, Wilfred Chen and Nosang Myung.