CHEE Family Keeps Adapting and Excelling

Dear alumni and friends,

I hope you and your loved ones are doing well. Thank you to everyone who submitted Class Notes. It’s wonderful to hear about your work and families and how your education helped get you where you are today.

In turn, I appreciate this opportunity to share CHEE news with all of you and am excited about connecting during the fast-approaching virtual Homecoming celebration.

100 Years Strong

Happy Birthday to Dick Edwards, who recently turned 100! He was the first student to graduate with a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona. Since then, he has made numerous contributions to CHEE, the university and PAC-12. We are tremendously grateful. Thank you, Dick, for being part of the CHEE family.

Homecoming

Be sure to mark your calendars for the university’s 2020 Homecoming celebrations. Virtual events will take place Nov. 12 through 14. The 57th Annual Engineers Breakfast is on Friday, Nov. 13, online from 8 to 10 a.m. RSVP today, and get set for a stroll down memory lane and a glimpse at what the college’s future holds.

Alumnus of the Year

Tom Peterson, the 2020 College of Engineering Alumnus of the Year, will be honored at the Engineers Breakfast as well as an informal CHEE gathering. Tom was a popular CHEE professor and department chair, and forward-thinking dean of the College of Engineering. All are welcome to attend the department event celebrating Tom’s legacy.

CHEE Celebrates Tom Peterson

Friday, Nov. 13 at 3 p.m.
Zoom Link: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/82196934533
Password: TOM2020

Labs During Pandemic Lend Real-World Perspective

While the university recently started Phase II of re-entry, meaning essential and small classes are being conducted in person, labs have operated in person since the beginning of the semester, albeit with a new normal.

Greg Ogden, research professor and lab manager, reports that an accelerated timeline is giving CHEE students a deeper appreciation for the kinds of pressures they will face in a professional field setting.

Undergraduate teams rotate through lab experiments, with half switching off attending in person and half joining by Zoom for each session. Students wear masks, social distance, and disinfect lab areas before and after each class. Juniors have completed heat exchanger experiments; seniors have cycled through reverse osmosis and continuous stirred-tank reactor kinetics experiments. Great job, everyone!

Alumnus Funds Student Research

Scott Roberts, who received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona in 1969, says he is “paying it forward” with the fund he established last year to provide undergraduate research opportunities.

Four exceptional chemical engineering undergraduates are receiving $2,500 each to conduct research with faculty mentors and then report on their findings at the end of the spring 2021 semester. Congratulations to the inaugural recipients:

Abbass Bah
Using Microalgae to Investigate the Removal of PFAS from Wastewater 
Adviser -- Kimberly Ogden

Izzy Beeley
Optimization of Microfluidic Devices for Portable Biosensors
Adviser -- Suchol Savagatrup

Aaron Deschner
Fabrication of a Quantum Dot Sensor to Detect Biomolecules
Adviser -- Anthony Muscat

Aakanksha Gadh
Development of All-liquid Sensing Particles for Environmental Monitoring
Adviser -- Suchol Savagatrup

A big thank you to Scott and other donors for making the undergraduate research awards a reality!