The Chemical Engineering Department is hosting a special undergraduate lecture on Chemical engineering behind coffee - liquid-solid extraction.
Abstract:
As one of the most popular beverages on earth, 500 billion cups of coffee on average are consumed every day. Making a personal perfect coffee is a biological and chemical process. In this self-designed lecture as part of the planning class Chemical Engineering Behind Coffee, we are going to learn the key principles of Chemical Engineering behind the coffee with a focus on the liquid-solid extraction. At the end of the lecture, the students are expected to know the role of chemical engineering in making a cup of coffee, understand the mathematical principles of liquid-solid extraction, and be able to apply the principles of liquid-solid extraction in other scenarios.
Biography:
Dr. Fangchao Song is a postdoctoral scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) working with Dr. Adam Arkin. He works on developing high throughput methods to reveal microbial interactions and profile microbial phenotypes in complex communities under the DOE funded project of Ecosystems and Networks Integrated with Genes and Molecular Assemblies. Prior to joining LBNL, he completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering with Dr. Dacheng Ren at Syracuse University, where he demonstrated bacteria can sense and respond to material stiffness like eukaryotic cells, and identified genes that are related to the bacterial mechanosensing. Dr. Song received his B.S. in Shandong University and M.S in Zhejiang University, both in Chemical Engineering, where he worked on polymer synthesis and mathematical modelling. Having been trained as both Chemical Engineer and Microbiologist, Dr. Song’s future research will focus on using engineering principles, modeling, and genetics to solve problems related to microbial systems.