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2021
February
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Chemical Engineering Professor Developing Indoor COVID-19 Detector Gerardine Botte received a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to work on the project. |
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Texas Tech University President's Innovation Award This award recognizes startups that exemplify innovation and commercialization. The awards give early-stage startups space and critical access to equipment to become revenue-generating companies. |
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Tech professor prepares to unleash Ultrafast COVID-19 Diagnostic Sensor When the pandemic started last March, Gerardine "Gerri" Botte, professor and Whitacre department chair of the Chemical Engineering Department at Texas Tech, was working on a project regarding E. Coli in water and began to wonder if there was a way to apply this research to the COVID-19 pandemic. Click to read full story |
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Worm Experiment to the ISS Dr. Siva Vanapalli and his team have been invited to launch their worm experiment to the International Space Station. The launch is scheduled for Feb 20th from the Wallop's facility in Virginia, and the experiment will be taking off on Northrop Grumman's Cygnus space craft. The purpose of the experiment is to measure muscle strength in C. elegans under microgravity conditions across several generations. More than 100,000 images of worms in microfluidic devices will be collected and analyzed to gain insights into short-term adaptation of muscles to microgravity and radiation, as well as potential trans-generational effects. Dr. Vanapalli and his team have also partnered with a non-profit organization Orion's Quest to develop an educational outreach program based on the collected worm videos and will be disseminated to more than 3000 middle and high school kids. If you and your family would like stickers with our space-flight logo, they will be available for pick-up in the dept office from Feb 15th-19th. |
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Spring 2021 ChE Undergraduate Tutoring Spring tutoring is now available! Click here to sign-up for Undergraduate tutoring. For questions please email: Jeffrey.rammage@ttu.edu |
January
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Joshua Howe receives funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Prof. Josh Howe has received funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) as part of a $1.3 M, 5 year collaborative effort with Prof. Yuexiao Shen (TTU, Civil Engineering), Florida State University, and industry focusing on remediation of contaminants from groundwater using highly selective macrocyclic adsorbent molecules. |
2020
December
Two TTU researchers recognized for developing a rapid, portable COVID-19 test, and a defensive phone charge to protect your data from public charging stations. |
Vaccine could protect against a variety of Coronavirus strains. |
October
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Chemical Engineering: Faculty Search Now Open Applicants should apply at the TTU online job application web site at http://www.texastech.edu/careers/ use requisition number 22027BR. And then please include the attached flyer. |
September
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Fighting the Pandemic: Making Better Tests A rapid COVID-19 test being developed could show your results in a matter of seconds, and it all began with an E. coli research project. Getting tested for COVID-19 can be time consuming and expensive, but what if it could be as easy as using saliva and could take less than a minute for results? Hear how Drs. Gerri Botte from Texas Tech University and Sharilyn Almodovar from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, along with graduate student Ashwin Ramanujam, worked on a biosensor that could make virus detection simpler. |
Fighting the Pandemic: Making Better Tests from Texas Tech Research on Vimeo.
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Fall 2020 ChE Undergraduate Tutoring Fall tutoring is now available every Sunday – Thursday 4-9PM via Zoom. Click here to sign-up for Undergraduate tutoring. For questions please email: jeffrey.rammage@ttu.edu |
August
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Dr. Wei Li received a three-year National Institute of Health R21 grant for $553k to develop hyperuniform (HU) microchips to study the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition of circulating tumor cells in blood and explore parameters for applying HU microchips in clinical settings. |
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Dana Thalman won one of the university's Student Academic Leadership Awards. |
June
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With a selection of the proposal "20-Fellows'20-0094: "Biomass-Based Polymer Electrolytes for Electrolyzers," Nathan Wilson has been awarded a fully-funded graduate fellowship totaling 225K over 4 years. Wilson, one of Texas Tech's own Chemical Engineering undergraduate students (who graduated May 2020) will be fully funded for his Ph.D. in this exciting project that deals with using in-situ resources from Mars to fabricate advanced electrolytes for CO2 reduction to support deep space exploration and Mars missions. As part of the project, he will be performing research every summer at NASA Glenn. Congratulations, Nathan, from the Whitacre College of Engineering, the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Texas Tech University! |
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Dr. Jasim Uddin awarded an Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2020 in the category of Mathematics, Physical Sciences, and Engineering. |
May
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TTU Chemical Engineering First Year Welcome View the First Year Welcome webinar. Helpful Links: |
ChE Graduate Students Aid in West Texas COVID-19 Efforts
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TTU Chemical Engineering Recognized! Raiders Who Rock nominees:
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Congratulations to our Spring 2020 Graduates! |
Click the image below to see a recording of the virtual Spring 2020 Senior Celebration!
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March
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Dana N. Thalman, a Chemical Engineering undergraduate student, has been awarded the NIH Postbac IRTA (Intramural Training & Education award). This program is for recent graduates and provides the opportunity to spend one to two years performing full-time research at the NIH. Dana will be working with Dr. Gustavo Pacheco at the NIH office in Bethesda, Maryland. |
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Dr. Sheima Khatib (PI) and Dr. Josh Howe (Co-PI) received a three-year National Science Foundation grant for $509k to support the project entitled Integrated Experimental and Theoretical Endeavor for Fundamental Understanding of Processes in Methane Dehydroaromatization. |
February
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Dr. Sindee Simon received a four-year National Science Foundation grant for $580k to support the project entitled, Relaxation of Slow Glassy Interphases in Polymeric Systems. Dilatometry and ultrafast scanning calorimetry will be used to study the rigid amorphous fraction in semicrystalline poly(ethylene terephthalate) and the immobile glassy layer at the particle interface in polymer-grafted silica nanoparticles. |
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Dr. Li received a 3-yr $425k grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant will be used for a project in collaboration with Dr. Yang Jiao, from Arizona State University, and Dr. Rob Bright from TTUHSC. Together, they will work to understand the fundamental aspects of hyper uniform structured microchips and their application in cancer research. |
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The Chemical Engineering program at Texas Tech University has been ranked #23 on the 2020 Best Colleges list! These rankings are the first to be based on median early-career salary data of over 5 million graduates from the U.S. Department of Education's resource, College Scorecard. |
2019
October
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Congratulations to Dr. Harvinder Gill. Dr. Gill was featured on Midland News for his talk on universal Flu shots at Midland College. Dr. Gill's research on universal flu vaccines would illuminate the need to get annual flu shots and instead would only require a one-time vaccine. |
September
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Researchers Receive $1.55 Million Grant From the Department of Energy. |
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Professor Receives $1.1 Million Grant to Improve Chemical Plant Energy Efficiency. |
August
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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. |
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Madhu Palaka won a Travel Award to present his work on the glass transition of polystyrene nanorods at the annual meeting of the North American Thermal Analysis Society, held in August in Newport, RI. |
July
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Dr. Sheima Khatib. Dr. Khatib was selected for the 2019 TLPDC Spotlight Award. She is being recognized for going "above and beyond" in teaching and service to improve Texas Tech instruction. |
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Professor Priya has been awarded the Mentor of the Year Award due to her extraordinary contributions as a mentor and entrepreneur. She has exhibited exemplary dedication to Texas Tech startups and volunteered hundreds of hours. |
May
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Dr. Harvinder Gill, whose startup Moonlight Therapeutics aims to commercialize the
use of microneedles to treat peanut allergies, |
April
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March
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February
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Ph.D. student Qi Li received a scholarship from SPE Thermoplastic & Foam Division, presented at the SPE Polyolefins Conference in Houston. Qi, who does research with Dr. Gregory McKenna, also received an SPE Travel Award to attend the SPE ANTEC in Detroit in March. |
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Sixue Cheng, a Ph.D. student supervised by Greg McKenna, received second place in the SPE Polyolefine poster competition in February. Her poster focused on how polymer additived influence the properties of lubricating oil. |
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2018
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2017
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2016
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March
![]() Gill ![]() Lacerda ![]() Marston ![]() Weeks ![]() Mckenna ![]() Vanapalli |
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2015
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2014
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2013
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