Texas Tech University

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Alumni News

The Department will host a reception at Homecoming on Friday, October 20, 2017, from 5:00 - 7:00 pm. Come have a drink and heavy hors d'oeuvres, meet the student leaders, talk to the faculty, take a department tour, and of course, catch up with old and new friends alike.

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Congratulations to Jack McCavit (1970 B.S.Ch.E.), who was awarded the 2017 Walton-Miller Award at the AIChE Safety and Health Division dinner at the 2017 spring meeting. The Walton-Miller Award is the highest AIChE award for process safety and recognizes outstanding contributions and achievements in the fields of chemical engineering loss prevention, safety, and health. Jack has made many contributions in the field of process safety during his 45+ year career, which included 35 years at Celanese, followed by his current position as President of JL McCavit Consultting, LLC., and he has been recognized by many other awards, including the Merit Award from the Mary Kay O'Conner Process Safety Center and Fellowship in both AIChE and the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS). Jack has been a strong supporter of the department over the years, serving on the departmental External Advisory Board. He is currently serving on the Whitacre College of Engineering Dean's Council.

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Congratulations to Christopher Klaasan (2016 B.S.Ch.E.), who received a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Chris is a Ph.D. student at Cornell University working on electrode materials for battery applications in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His work, supervised by Dr. Yong Joo, will focus on lithium air battery stability, with a particular interest in the dissolution of insulating side-reaction products.

Klaasan

Matthew Jordan, Leah Harper, and James Tata (all 2017 B.S.Ch.E.) spent the past summer as research fellows at National Laboratories. Matthew worked at the National Institute of Standards & Technology on a laser calorimetry project with Dr. Cary Presser, a NIST scientist. Leah and Jim both worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Leah worked with Dr. Khatib performing surface characterization of zeolite-supported MoOx and MoCy catalysts using x-ray techniques to elucidate the active sites and deactivation pathways for methane dehydroaromatization, whereas Jim performed activity and characterization experiments on Cu-loaded ZSM-5 catalysts made here at Texas Tech in Dr. Khatib's laboratory for use in the water-gas shift reaction. Jim characterized his internship as "amazing" and "eye-opening," and Leah said that the experience was a once in a lifetime opportunity that further solidified her decision to pursue graduate school. All three of the students plan to pursue Ph.D.s, with Leah continuing on at Texas Tech in EE and Jim continuing here in ChE.

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Your successes are our successes. Please share your news with us at maryr.harris@ttu.edu.