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2012

December

• Dr. Micah Green received an NSF CAREER Award for his proposal "CAREER: Structure-property-processing Relations for Aggregation-resistant Graphene." The $400,000 grant is a five−year award.

November

• Dr. Sindee L. Simon was named a Fall 2012 Assessment Spotlight Champion by the Texas Tech University Office of Planning and Assessment.

September

• Ariana Poindexter, a sophomore chemical engineering major, has been named the recipient of an 2012 Donald F. Othmer Sophomore Academic Excellence Award. The Sophomore Academic Excellence Award is presented to the one National AIChE student member in each student chapter who has attained the highest scholastic grade-point average during his/her freshman and sophomore years, on recommendation of the Student Chapter Advisor. Poindexter received free registration for the AIChE Annual Student Conference on October 26-29, 2012 in Pittsburgh, Penn.
• Josh Castilaw, a freshman chemical engineering major, has been named the recipient of an AIChE Freshman Recognition Award. This award is given to the freshman from each chapter that becomes the most involved with AIChE.
• Dr. Harvinder Gill is the recipient of a five-year, $2.2 million grant in direct cost from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study an innovative oral vaccine delivery platform.
• Xiguang Li, a graduate student working under the direction of Dr. Greg McKenna, goes to Paris, France, on a nine-month Chateaubriand Fellowship awarded by the French government. Li will perform research at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) on a joint project between Dr. McKenna and ENSAM faculty Drs. Miquelard-Garnier and Régnier in the area of forced assembly of polymer nanofilms and graphene-based nanocomposites. Li joined the graduate program at Texas Tech in 2009 after completing a B.S. in chemistry at Nanjing University and a M.S. in chemistry at University of California-Irvine. He is only the second Chinese student ever awarded a Chateaubriand Fellowship.
• Dr. Yingying Chen, a recent graduate with a Doctor of Philosophy in chemical engineering, received first place in the Mathematics, Physical Sciences, and Engineering category of the Texas Tech University Graduate School's Outstanding Thesis/Dissertation Awards competition for her dissertation titled "An Analysis of Model Parameter Uncertainty on Online Model-based Applications." Chen's dissertation advisor was Dr. Karlene Hoo.

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

April

• Dr. Harvinder Gill is the recipient of a Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for his proposal "Pollen Grains as Novel Vaccine−Transporters for Oral Vaccination."
• Dr. Greg McKenna served as the Scientific Chair of the 15th International Conference on Deformation, Yield and Fracture of Polymers, held April 1-5, 2012, Rolduc Abbey, Kerkrade, The Netherlands.
• Rong Xu, supervised by Dr. Ted Wiesner, won second place in the Engineering Division of the 11th Annual Graduate Student Poster Competition in April. Her research poster entitled, "Dynamic Model of a Solar Thermochemical Water-Splitting Reactor with Integrated Energy Collection and Storage," detailed her work on a novel shell-and tube reactor which can sustain 24/7 hydrogen production from solar energy.

March

• Dr. Greg McKenna has been named an Outstanding Referee of the Physical Review and Physical Review Letters journals, as chosen by the journal editors for 2012.
• Dr. Raghunathan Rengasamy has been named a top 15 reviewer for Computers and Chemical Engineering Journal.

January

• Dr. Siva A. Vanapalli received an NSF CAREER Award for his proposal "CAREER: Collective Hydrodynamics of Confined Drops in Micro−Fluidic Parking Networks." The $400,000 grant is a five−year award.

2011

November

• Dr. Brandon Weeks has been named the recipient of the Texas Tech University Chancellor's Council Distinguished Research Award for 2011.
• Dr. Siva A. Vanapalli and his group's work is featured on the cover of Lab on a Chip.

October

• Dr. Micah Green has been awarded a 2011 Mortar Board Senior Honor Society/Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK) Faculty Recognition Award. The Faculty Recognition Award is unique among those offered from Mortar Board/ODK in that it is based solely on student nominations. Green was chosen as one of five awardees based on a pool of over ninety applications from a wide range of departments across Texas Tech University.
• Dr. Greg McKenna begins serving a two-year term as Vice President of the Society ofRheology.

July

• Dr. Karlene Hoo is an Intergovernmental personnel act (IPA) rotator in the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP), in the Directorate of Engineering at the National Science Foundation (NSF). She will serve a two-year appointment starting July 18, 2011. She is the current Program Director for the Partnerships for Innovation: Accelerating Innovation Research program at the NSF. The Accelerating Innovation Research (AIR) program, provides two choices designed to spur the translation of fundamental research into market-valued solutions, to encourage public-private partnerships, and to accelerate innovation that results in the creation of new wealth and the building of strong local, regional, and national economies.

2010

August

• Dr. Brandon Weeks and co−workers featured on the cover of Crystal Research and Technology.

2009

August

Dr. Sindee L. Simon recognized as a new Texas Tech University Horn Professor.

June

• Dr. Greg McKenna receives the coveted Bingham Medal from the Society of Rheology. "The Society's Bingham Medal has been awarded annually since 1948 to a resident of the North American Continent or a member of The Society who has made an outstanding contribution to the science of rheology. The Society of Rheology is composed of physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers, and mathematicians interested in advancing and applying rheology, which is defined as the science of deformation and flow of matter." This Medal will be given to Professor McKenna in the 81^st Annual Meeting, October 18−22, 2009, in Madison, Wisconsin. For more additional information about Professor McKenna, visit his website.

2007

March

• Kevin McBride, a junior in chemical engineering, receives the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship.
• Dr. Lenore Dai receives the NSF−CAREER award.
• Dr. Brandon Weeks receives the NSF−CAREER award.

2006

November

• Dr. Rajesh Khare an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, has won the 3M Non−Tenured Faculty Grant for 2006. Dr. Khare was one of the 27 awardees selected by 3M researchers this year. The award is for supporting Dr. Khare's research in the area of multiscale modeling. Dr. Khare's research group uses the techniques of multiscale modeling to develop fundamental understanding of physical and chemical processes in the areas of nanofluidics, biolubrication, polymer thin films, and biofuels.

October

• Dr. Greg McKenna has been awarded the 2007 Founders Award by the Polymer Analysis Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers. This award will be given to him at the next ANTEC to be held in Cincinnati, OH, May 6−10, 2007. There will be a symposium in his honor at this Annual Technical Conference of the Society of Plastics Engineers (ANTEC). The Award is named in honor of the founders of the Polymer Analysis Division, Tom Gedemer, Jesse M. Howard III, Alan Riga, and George Schmitt. The Award consists of a check for $3,000 and a plaque citing the contribution of the recipient.

March

• Most bioengineering faculty members and some members of polymer and materialsgroup have relocated their research laboratories to the new $37M Experimental Sciences building in 2006.