Chemical Engineering & Materials Science

David Monteiro '14 Awarded Prestigious Goldwater Scholarship: Standout Student Driven to Find Cure for Arthritis through Chemical Engineering Research

April 12, 2013

Stevens student David Monteiro ’14 was recently awarded a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, making him one of only 271 college undergraduate students who received the award nationally for the 2013-2014 academic year. The Goldwater Scholarship program supports academically-outstanding college sophomores or juniors who intend to pursue careers as scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Monteiro, the son of a computer engineer and a clinical researcher, is a Chemical Engineering major with a 3.99 grade point average and a noble lifelong goal – to eradicate arthritis and improve the quality of life of millions of people worldwide. “Arthritis is a major problem facing the world’s growing elderly [Read more...]

Creating Sustainable Energy from Microalgae

December 4, 2012

Stevens researchers to produce diesel fuel from microalgae in a cost-competitive, high-performance CO2-neutral process. Chances are that you have eaten corn today in some form. Corn is one of the largest crops produced in the United States, and it is used in many of the foods that almost everyone consumes every day. As an important biofuel source, corn is also used to produce significant amounts of ethanol for blending with gasoline. With the growing need for sustainable energy sources, about 40% of the U.S. corn crop is reserved to be converted to biofuel. Factors including increasing demand for food and the [Read more...]

Creating Sustainable Energy from Microalgae

December 4, 2012

Funded by a $650,000 grant by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Biomass Program, Dr. Adeniyi Lawal of Stevens Institute of Technology will be leading a team investigating microalgae as a biomass fuel source. Dr. Simon Podkolzin, also of Stevens, will serve as a Co-PI. Existing technology uses corn to produce significant amounts of ethanol for blending with gasoline, but with increasing demand for food and widespread drought, the price for corn has skyrocketed, raising prices significantly for both food and fuel. The research team is therefore developing a transformative technology that converts the renewable and abundant supply of [Read more...]

Technological Breakthrough Promises Safer Medical Implants

October 22, 2012

Orthopedic implants that reconstruct joints or repair trauma are continuously increasing in sophistication and prevalence, restoring function and mobility for over a million patients annually. The global market is expected to reach $30 billion in 2012 and $46.5 billion in 2017. However, about 1% of hip implants, 4% of knee implants, and more than 15% of implants associated with orthopedic trauma fail because of infection. Dr. Matthew Libera of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, in collaboration with faculty across numerous disciplines at Stevens Institute of Technology, has been working to radically change implant design to minimize the [Read more...]

Nine Stevens Researchers Honored by the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame

October 19, 2012

As has become habit in recent years, the Stevens community was incredibly well represented among honorees at the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame (NJIHoF). Four faculty members and five graduate students from the Schaefer School of Engineering and Science received awards at the 2012 ceremony, a black tie dinner held Oct. 18 at the W Hotel in Hoboken. Co-sponsored by Stevens, the NJIHoF is an annual event that honors scientists, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs and organizations who have contributed to the state’s consistent leadership in innovation, promoting economic growth and improving the quality of life. Eighteen Stevens alumni are past winners at [Read more...]

Stevens Doctoral Student Wins Scholarship from SPIE for Cutting-Edge Photonic Crystal Fiber Optic Sensing Research

June 26, 2012

The International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) has recognized the work of Stevens Institute of Technology graduate student Fei Tian with a prestigious Scholarship in Optics & Photonics. With funding by The National Science Foundation, Fei’s research utilizes photonic crystal fiber to create cutting-edge sensor technology in gas, chemical, or biological media. Photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is a new class of optical fiber that yields better and more efficient ways to guide light, allowing for more advanced applications not possible in conventional optical fiber. Fei‘s work expands on PCF’s unique properties by using long period gratings (LPG) in PCF to [Read more...]

PhD Candidate Wins First Prize for Catalysis Research

May 29, 2012

Research will enhance molecular understanding of chemical reactions Tao Chen (center) and Dr. Podkolzin (far right) Tao Chen, a PhD candidate from the Chemical Engineering & Materials Science Department at Stevens Institute of Technology, has won the first prize and a cash award for his research presentation at the annual symposium of the Catalysis Society of Metropolitan New York. The symposium was held on March 14, 2012 at the ExxonMobil Corporate Research in Annandale, NJ and was attended by more than 130 participants. Students and postdoctoral researchers participated in a poster competition with 30 poster presentations from universities in New York, New [Read more...]

Stevens Researchers Advance Innovative Lab-in-a-Fiber Research Frontier

May 21, 2012

Dr. Du and Dr. Sukhishvili’s collaboration wins grant from the National Science Foundation Many vital chemical and biological processes in modern technology take place in microscopic, tightly constrained environments, where experimentation at macroscopic scale is no longer adequate to understand and exploit molecular behavior. Dr. Henry Du and Dr. Svetlana Sukhishvili of Stevens Institute of Technology have recently been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to address this challenge with a project titled Lab-in-a-Fiber Optofluidic Platform: In-Situ Assembly and Response of Layer-by-Layer Polyelectrolyte Films in Confined Geometry. “We applaud the efforts of Profs. Sukhishvili and Du," says Dr. Michael Bruno, Dean of [Read more...]

Dr. Podkolzin's International Green Chemistry Collaboration Wins NSF Grant

April 10, 2012

Nanoparticle catalysts for industrial chemical reactions use oxygen with only water as a byproduct Dr. Simon Podkolzin Environmental considerations can be costly, but they are not a luxury in an ecologically aware world; researchers must work urgently to devise new eco-friendly and economical practices for industrial applications. Dr. Simon Podkolzin and Dr. Henry Du of the Chemical Engineering & Materials Science Department at Stevens Institute of Technology have been awarded an NSF grant to establish a new collaboration with Eindhoven University in the Netherlands for studying gold and silver catalytic nanoparticles for green chemistry [Read more...]

Dr. Henry Du Elected SPIE Fellow

March 23, 2012

Professor Du's interdisciplinary fiber-optic sensing research advances applications in environmental monitoring, medical diagnosis and energy production Dr. Henry Du, Professor and Director of the Chemical Engineering & Materials Science department at Stevens Institute of Technology is a leading expert in nanotechnology-enabled fiber-optic sensing, particularly using photonic crystal fiber (PCF) as the sensing platform. In recognition of the important contributions of his work, SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, has elected Dr. Du as a fellow of the society. The fellowship acknowledges Dr. Du’s significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. It honors his service [Read more...]