Faculty News

Professors Armando Corripio and Danny Reible finished overall third for the third year in a row this March in the Leukemia Cup, a sailing regatta designed to raise funds for leukemia research and victims. Louis Thibodeaux sailed with them in two of the three races and guided them to a second place in one of them. Their boat raised over $600 for the Leukemia Society.

Professor Armando Corripio's book Principles and Practice of Automatic Process Control is in its second edition and has sold 12, 000 copies to date. Its publisher has requested that Professor Corripio and his co-author Carlos Smith produce a third edition of the book.

Professor Kerry Dooley chaired the session on "Materials Processing in Supercritical Fluids" at the AIChE 2001 Annual Meeting.

Professor Douglas Harrison gave a seminar entitled "Hydrogen Production Using Sorption-Enhanced Reaction" at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, in April. He is also currently serving as a peer reviewer for the Department of Energy, University Coal Research program.

Professor Martin Hjortso left for Denmark in June. He will spend a year at the Center for Process Biotechnology at Denmark Technical University (DTU) as Otto Mønsted Visiting Professor. "DTU is my alma mater, but the Center for Process Biotechnology did not even exist when I was a student there," says Hjortso. "Since then, biotechnology has exploded, and it is very big at DTU because the biotech industry hires a large number of the ChE graduates. I will probably be teaching a high level class on microbial kinetics while I am there as well as work with some of the graduate students on their projects. It will (hopefully) be good to be home again. I hope to be able to find a place to live downtown in the medieval parts of Copenhagen, inside the old city ramparts, which I find a more charming location than the suburban area north of the city where the university is located."

Assistant professor Elizabeth Podlaha presented a paper entitled "Electrodeposition of Alloys and Nanocomposites" at the Sixth Joint Engineering Society Conference (JESC) of the Louisiana Engineering Society in Kenner, LA, in February.

ProfessorDanny Reible received the 2002 Charles E. Coates Award from the American Chemical Society and American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Dr. Reible has also been invited to participate in the Pellston Workshop on Sediment Quality Criteria for the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. This workshop is designed to provide scientific evaluation and input on environmental regulatory policies.

ProfessorLouis Thibodeaux rode in the 2002 Spanishtown Mardi Gras Parade, courtesy of the Faculty Athletic Club. He was accompanied by his granddaughter, Bonnie McLindon.

Professor K.T. Valsaraj chaired a session on "Prediction and Correlation of Transport Properties" at the AIChE 2002 Spring meeting in New Orleans. He was also a major contributor, along with Professor Danny Reible, in the Louisiana State Department of Natural Resource's rewrite of the 29B rules for disposal of oil field waste. Dr. Valsaraj continues his work on the capture and analysis of fog water in and around metro Baton Rouge as part of a larger NSF project.

Faculty Awards

Kerry Dooley has been awarded two new grants: NSF-REU, "Research in the Chemical Sciences for Undergraduates at Louisiana State University," with Steven F. Watkins, 2002-2004 ($283,000); and Eagleview Technologies/MGK Co., "Catalyst Development and Reactor Study for Asymmetric Ketone and Polyimide Production," 2002 ($70,000).

Doug Harrison received the 2002 Dow Outstanding Teaching Award.

Lisa Podlaha has received a NSF SGER grant ($80,000) to explore the use of electrodeposition to produce nanostamps for optical gratings (with Robert Cohn, University of Louisville). Podlaha was also listed in the 2002 edition of Who's Who in Engineering Education (WWEE).

Danny Reible received funding in the amount of 2.25 million dollars for "Field Demonstration of Active Caps," a project led by LSU which also includes Rice University, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, and several federal agencies and industrial concerns. The goal of the project is to demonstrate innovative technologies for managing contaminated sediments.

K.T. Valsaraj has received renewal of his grants from the US EPA through the Gulf Coast HSRC and also from the U S Army Corps of Engineers (Department of Defense).

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