Current students

The winner of the 2016-2017 Chemical Engineering Medal for Proficiency in Research (Park and Veva Reilly Medal) is Dr. Marzieh Riahinezhad.  Marzieh Riahinezhad (PhD, Chemical Engineering, September 2015) received the international and extremely prestigious “Best Dissertation of the Year ADIPEC Award” in excellence in energy (November 2015). Marzieh’s PhD thesis was selected by an international scientific panel of 26 judges in the oil and gas industry as one of the top three best 2015 dissertations (from a record number of 501) in energy, worldwide.

ABSTRACT:  Human civilization has been driven by harvest and utilization of solar energy.  Developing better technologies leading to more effective energy harvest and utilization is being emerged as one of the most essential research themes.  In this presentation, two topics, energy storage and protein therapeutics, will be covered.  The first topic will focus on design and fabrication of electrochemical devices such as supercapacitors, batteries, and fuel cells.  Recognize that living organisms are made from basic elements (e.g., C, O, H, N and P), consume energy and repro

ABSTRACT:  Microalgae have received a great deal of attention as a platform for biofuel production due to their photosynthetic nature. However, the over emphasis on the production of lipids for biodiesel synthesis can limit the productivity of algae cultures and undervalues the potential applications for the significant quantities of protein and carbohydrate fractions present in this biomass. Currently, the commercial prospects for microalgae biofuels are primarily inhibited by their low cell densities and the high cost of current lipid extraction processes.

ABSTRACT: In this work, the issue of stability for two-phase incompressible flow in homogeneous porous media out of the Darcy regime (i.e. when inertia must be taken into account) is considered. The development is based on a macroscopic model derived by upscaling the pore-scale Navier-Stokes equations, assuming that the inertial correction is quadratic in the filtration velocity, as widely admitted with the classical Darcy-Forchheimer model. 

"Adhesion, Friction & Lubrication of Surfaces & Liquid Films and their Relation to Diverse Phenomena Such as how Geckos Climb on Walls and Ceilings, Surface Damage, and Sensing" by Professor Jacob Isrealachvili, Chemical Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara, United States