News
2020
Feburary
Congratulations to Qian Tian for winning a $ 1000 Polyolefins Conference Scholarship awarded by Thermoplastics Materials and Foams Division. This award is in recognition of her valuable contributions to South Texas Section, Society of Plastics Engineers.
2019
October
Congratulations to Madhu Pallaka, Evelyn Lopez, and Rozana Bari for successfully completing their PhDs!
August
Madhu Pallaka won a travel award to present his work on the glass transition and structural recovery of 20 nm stacked polystyrene nanorods at the annual meeting of the North American Thermal Analysis Society, held in August in Newport, RI.
Alex Zapata won the $ 1000 NATAS Student Award, sponsored by Setaram, for best graduate student paper at the annual meeting of the North American Thermal Analysis Society, held in August in Newport, RI. The award is for his work using ultrafast scanning calorimetry to study the glass transition as a function of liquid crystal structure in the pharmaceutical itraconazole.
2018
August
Cogratulations to Nazam Sakib for winning the NATAS Student award for his work on the rheology and thermal behavior of polystyrene-grafted nanocomposites. Naz received a $ 500 honorarium, sponsored by SETARAM, and he gave a special oral presentation at the annual meeting of the North American Thermal Analysis Society (NATAS), held in Philadelphia during the second week of August.
Congratulations to Madhusudhan Pallaka and Qian Tian for winning Travel Awards to the NATAS meeting in Philadelphia. Madhu presented his work on nanoconfined epoxy polymerization. Qian presented her modeling work on the effect of the beta relaxation on structural recovery as observed by scanning calorimetry
2017
June
Congratulations to Qian Tian! Qian Tian recieved a travel grant to present her work on nanoconfined equilibrium polymerization at the annual meeting of the North American Thermal Analysis Society (NATAS), to be held at the University of Delaware in August 2017.
Congratulations to Rozana Bari for being awarded a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from Texas Tech Graduate School. Rozana has published one paper to date and is working on getting the data and writing several additional papers.
2016
August
Congratulations to Qian Tian! Qian won first place in the Student Poster Competition at the International Conference for Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry (ICTAC), held in Orlando, FL. Her research deals with equilibrium polymerization of butyl methacrylate in bulk and in nanopore confinement.
May
Kudos to Evelyn Lopez for being awarded a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Texas Tech Graduate School. Evelyn has published two papers to date and is working on finishing her last publications and her dissertation.
2015
October
Congratulations to Yung P. Koh who is named Research Professor in the group. Yung graduated with a PhD in 2010 and has been overseeing the calorimetry in the group since then. Yung has 12 refereed publications and is pursuing work concerning Tg, physical aging, and reactions at the nanoscale.
May
Congratulations to Evelyn Lopez, Madhu Palaka, and Rozana Bari for receiving NATAS Student Travel Awards to attend the 2015 annual meeting of the North American Thermal Analysis Society, which will be held in August in Montreal! Congratulations also go to Heedong Yoon in Dr. McKenna's group who received an award for collaborative work with Yung P. Koh.
April
Congratulations to both Ran Tao and Siyang Gao for successfully completing their PhDs! Ran plans to join NIST in Gaithersburg, MD, as a postdoctoral researcher studying the rheology of complex fluids. Siyang has joined Ascend Performance Materials in Pensacola, FL as a polymer chemist.
2014
October
Haoyu Zhao successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. Congratulations, Haoyu!
September
Congratulations to Haoyu Zhao on winning first place in the Student Poster Competition at the North American Thermal Analysis Society meeting, held in Santa Fe, NM, in September 2014. His poster, entitled "Methyl Methacrylate Polymerization in Nanoporous Matrix: Reactivity and Resulting Properties," was coauthored by Fatema Begum, Ziniu Yu, Ronald Hedden, and Sindee Simon.
July
Ran Tao was invited to give an oral presentation at the Gordon Research Seminar on Polymer Physics in Mount Holyoke, MA, July 12 and 13, 2014; her talk is titled "The Effect of Silica Nanoparticles on the Rheological and Glass Transition Behavior of Polystyrene: Reinforcement and Dynamics." In addition, Siyang Gao will serve as a Discussion Leader at the GRS. Ran and Siyang, along with Evelyn Lopez, will attend both the GRS and the Gordon Research Conference on Polymer Physics.
June
Siyang Gao and Ran Tao received NATAS Student Travel Awards to present their work at the 2014 annual meeting of the North American Thermal Analysis Society (NATAS). The meeting will held in September in Santa Fe, NM.
Dr. Sindee L. Simon will receive the 2014 Mettler Toledo Outstanding Achievement Award from the North American Thermal Analysis Society (NATAS). The award will be presented at the annual meeting, to be held in September, 2014, in Santa Fe, NM.
April
Dr. Sindee L. Simon received the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) 2014 Research/Engineering Technology Award at the Annual Technical Conference (ANTEC). for research and technology developments in polymers and polymer composites and for her pioneering contributions in thermal analysis of polymers.
March
Doctoral student Evelyn Lopez was awarded the Carl Storm Underrepresented Minority (CSURM) Fellowship to attend the 2014 Gordon Research Conference on Polymer Physics.
Feburary
Siyang Gao won second place for her poster titled "The Experimental and Modeling Study of Reaction Kinetics of Cyclopentadiene Dimerization" at the International Polyolefins Conference held in Houston on Feb. 23-26, 2014.
2013
October
Dr. Sindee L. Simon and Greg McKenna received the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Lubbock Chapter Scientists of the Year Award. The award was presented at the Annual Scientist of the Year (SOY) Dinner. The ARCS Foundation,Inc. is a national volunteer women's organization dedicated to providing financial support to academically outstanding students majoring in the fields of natural science, medicine, and engineering. This academic year the local chapter has awarded thirteen scholarships to students enrolled at Texas Tech, the TTUHSC, and LCU.
August
Haoyu Zhao receives the PerkinElmer NATAS Student Award and Siyang Gao receives a NATAS Student Travel Award to attend the 41st Annual Meeting of the North American Thermal Analysis Society (NATAS) in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
May
Graduate Student Jing Zhao's work on 20 million year old amber published in Nature Communications, was highlighted by National Geographic, the Tikalon blog and by Texas Tech. Zhao made calorimetric and viscoelastic measurements on 20 million year old amber under the guidance of Dr. Sindee L. Simon and Dr. Greg McKenna. The purpose of the work was to test the idea of glass formation through an “ideal” glass transition. The findings challenge this view and alter the current paradigms for the physics of glasses.
February
Siyang Gao won third place at the International Polyolefins Conference for her poster, titled "The Calorimetric Glass Transition of Single Polystyrene Ultrathin Films." The conference, which was held in Houston on February 23-27, 2013, attracted more than 600 participants and more than 40 poster presentations.
January
Texas Tech made a big impression at the first Texas Soft Matter Meeting held at the University of Houston in January 2013. Texas Tech had 24 representatives at the meeting including 19 students, two post-doctoral researchers, and three faculty members. An invited lecture was given by Dr. Sindee L. Simon. The students and other faculty were from the Soft Matter Working Group at Texas Tech. The group focuses on research and education in the blossoming field of Soft Matter and Soft Materials and is represented by faculty from the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Dr. Sindee L. Simon was named recipient of the 2013 Lubbock Women of Excellence Award in Science from the Lubbock YWCA.
2012
November
Dr. Sindee L. Simon was named a Fall 2012 Assessment Spotlight Champion by the Texas Tech University Office of Planning and Assessment.
August
Dr. Sindee L. Simon served as the Technical Program Chair for the 40th annual meeting of the North American Thermal Society (NATAS) in Orlando, Florida. At the meeting, she received the NATAS Service Award acknowledging her service over the years in various capacities, including as president in 2005-06.
July
Dr. Sindee L. Simon was elected Vice Chair of the Gordon Research Conference meeting on Polymer Physics, to be held in 2014.
2009
August
Dr. Sindee L. Simon recognized as a new Texas Tech University Horn Professor.
2008
August
Yung P. Koh is awarded the Perkin Elmer Student Award at the annual meeting of the North American Society.
Simon Group
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Address
Texas Tech University, Department of Chemical Engineering, Box 43121, Lubbock, TX 79409 -
Phone
806.834.8470 -
Email
sindee.simon@ttu.edu