Sometimes not so good things happen to good people and such is the case with 2022
graduate, Alex Logan and his family. Recently, Alex's 16 year old brother, Marshall
was diagnosed with Metastatic Ewings Sarcoma, it’s hard to stage the cancer but his Oncologist did say
“if I had to stage it, it’s stage 4”. Marshall has a long road ahead of him of chemo
and surgeries. A way to help this family has been organized and the link is here. Please help a fellow Techie if you can. Your generosity is much appreciated at this
dire time of need.
Thank you,
The New Mexico Tech Chemical Engineering Department
The Chemical Engineering Department at NMT is among the fastest growing departments.
A degree in chemical engineering is a highly flexible and adaptable education. Graduates
work in virtually every field and command the highest wages.
The chemical engineering program at New Mexico Tech is accredited by the engineering
accreditation commission of ABET.
Great job, Janet Baffoe and Tahmidul Islam for taking First and Second Place in the
Grad/Tech Poster competition at this year's 33rd Annual Rio Grande Symposium for Advanced
Materials (RGSAM) and all other New Mexico Tech students who presented and participated!
Congratulations Madeline Finale for successfully defending her thesis, "Photothermal Nanoparticles to Enhance Heat Driven Flow-Like Behavior of Epoxy Using
Visible Light" on September 28th. Great Job, Madeline!
The Macey Scholars Program is based upon accomplishments in the classroom and/or research
laboratory together with institutional service and other activities that have brought
credit to the individual student and to New Mexico Tech. These accomplishments could
include awards, honors, membership in campus organizations, part-time jobs, service
to the university, and research endeavors and other relevant activities. This year, two of our students were selected to be Macey Scholars; Samantha Lindholm
and James Angelos. Congratulations to both of these outstanding students!
Congratulations to Aaron Plant! Aaron successfully defended his thesis, "Controlling Solubility of Poly(3-hexylthiophene) Block Copolymers Toward Environmentally
Preferable Solvents and Their Applications" on July 19th. Great Job, Aaron!
We present to you our 2023 Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering graduating
class! Congratulations, everyone!
Our students excelled this past weekend (April 21st-23rd) at the 2023 AIChE Rocky
Mountain Regional Conference at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, WY. Arrika Duran
took first place and Gaeun (Grace) Kim took third place in the poster presentation
competition and the NMT AIChE team took first place in the Jeopardy competition! Way
to go!
Madeline Finale defended her proposal, "Plasmonic Refractory Titanium Nitride Nanoparticles
for Localizes Heat Generation in Thermoset and Thermoreversible Polymers", on April
19th. Great Job, Madeline!
Congratulations to ChemE's Samantha Lindholm for being named New Mexico Tech's 2023 Engineering Student
of the Year! See more here.
Congratulations to ChemE's Arrika Duran for placing 3rd in the Food, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology
V Poster Competition at the 2022's AIChE Student Conference in Phoenix, AZ.
Congratulations to ChemE's Atiqur Rahman (third from left) who took first place in Oral Presentation
at the 2022 Rio Grande Symposium for Advanced Materials in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
2022 Permian Basin Gas Processors Scholarship Recipients: Gaeun Kim and James Angelos
Recently, our own Seth Price had a minor role in a Today Show segment on Women Storm
Chasers! Check it out here.
Congratulations 2022 Chemical Engineering Graduates!
On April 27th, 2022 Socorro High School hosted their annual Science Night. NMT Chemical
Engineering participated in this outreach event -
Congratulations Brandon McReynolds! Brandon has been selected as New Mexico Tech's 2022 Engineering Student of the Year!
Chris Walkling (B.S., Chemical Engineering, 2020) was recently featured in an article on biofuel development in the Fall 2021 Naval
Aviation News - read a copy of the article at: https://www.nmt.edu/dvancement/docs/Unlikely_Fuel_Source_Makes_Waves.pdf. Walkling's a member of a research team developing a hybrid biological/chemical process
that uses bacteria found in seawater to generate a "platform" chemical, which can
then be converted into jet, diesel, gasoline or even missile fuel.
Department organized the first successful Virtual Alumni Meeting on May, 21 (2020).
Aubrey Hands received Outstanding Student of the Year Award (2020) from the Department.
William Hale won the NMT Cramer award(2020 graduating batch)
Aubrey Hands, Dominic Filonowich, Chris Walking and Alan Tirado received the Department Service Award (2020).
Aubrey Hands has been selected as the Outstanding EngineeringStudent Award (2020) by Professional Engineers at New Mexico Tech.
Two Chemical Engineering Students (Aubrey Hands and Dominic Filonowich) won the 1st
place and 3rd place for the poster competion in theFood, Pharmaceutical, and Biotechnology III Division and the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division, respectively, at the National AIChE Student Conference 2019, Orlando. Congratulations to both of them!
William R. Hale, Aubrey Hands and Mia Navarro from Chemical Engineering Department are Tau Beta Pi Scholarship(2019-2020) Award Winners.
Margaret House won the NMT Brown award (2019 graduating batch).
Veronica Espinoza and Alan Tirado from the Chemical Engineering Department were selected
as the Macey Scholars for the 2019-2020 school year.
Alan Tirado also won Student Appreciation Award (2019).
Alan Tirado and Meghan Hill received the Department Service Award (2019).
Meghan Hill and Jayla Irvin (joint winner) received the Outstanding Studentof The Year award (2019).
Dr. Leclerc received the AIChE 2018-2019 Distinguished Faulty Award (2019).
Margaret House has been selected as the Outstanding EngineeringStudent (2019) by Professional Engineers at New Mexico Tech.
Faculty Research Highlights
Two chemical engineering faculty members Dr. Sanchari Chowdhury and Dr. Pabitra Choudhury
along with LANL collaborator Dr. Prashant Padmanabhan have received DOE FAIR grant
of $0.75M for three years. This is a part of DOE initiative for the Funding for Accelerated,
Inclusive Research (FAIR) to build research capacity in historically underrepresented
institutions. DOE FAIR Grant . The project title for the grant is “Light Mediated Synthesis of Single Atom and Single
Atom Alloy Catalysts.” The grant will support three graduate students and one undergraduate
student. The team will combine experiments and theory to develop a mild light mediated
synthesis method for stable transition metal based single atom and single atom alloy
catalysts. Single-atom and single atom alloy catalysts are promising systems to enhance
different catalytic reactions including CO 2 reduction, O 2 reduction reaction,water
splitting and solar energy conversion. Over the past decade, single-atom and single
atom alloy catalysts have attracted extensive attention due to their high atom efficiency,
strong metal support interactions and excellent catalytic performance. However, the
challenges for the wide scale industrial applications of single atom and single atom
alloy catalysts are the complexity of the synthesis processes (multiple steps, expensive
processes, energy extensive etc.) for stable high loading catalysts or precise control
over the alloying. The proposed light mediated synthesis of single atom and single
atom alloy catalysts has strong potential to overcome these challenges and make the
technology more environmentally friendly and industry friendly.
Congratulations to Paulo Oemig (NMSU, PI); Donghyeon Ryu (Science PI); Youngmin Lee (NMT), Yu-Lin Shen
(UNM) (Co-PI) “Self-Powered Health Monitoring Wearable for Non-Invasive Diagnosis
of Health Disorders of NASA Astronauts during Space Exploration” inNASA EPSCoR Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN)for FY 2023 (Announcement # NNH23ZHA001C). Budget: $749,588 from 6/1/2023 to 5/31/2026.
(Funding Awarded)
Dr. S. Chowdhury has published a research article Nanoscale (2020). This article is on ultrafast relaxation dynamics in bimetallic plasmonic
catalysts.
Dr. P. Choudhury has received research funding from the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) on additive manufacturing science.
Dr. P. Choudhury's group has published a research article in J. Phys. Chem. C (2020). This work is on screening single metal-atom catalysts for methane to methanol
conversion process at mild conditions.
Dr. Tartis's group has published a research article in Nanotheranostics (2020). This work is on phospholipid prodrug conjugates of insoluble chemotherapeutic
agents for ultrasound targeted drug delivery.
Dr. Tartis recieved the DURIP award from ONR for the project on "Opto-acoustic Imaging for Cavitation Detection in blast-induced
Traumatic Brain Injury".
Dr. S. Chowdhury has been awarded ACS-PRF grant for three years. Dr. P. Choudhury is an earlier recipient of the same grant.
Dr. S. Chowdhury's group has published a research article in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells (2019). This work is on Titanium nitride nanoparticles for the efficient photocatalysis of
bicarbonate into formate production.
Another article is published from Dr. P. Choudhury's lab in Applied Materials Today(2019).
Dr. P. Choudhury's group has published a research article in ACS Catalysis (2019). This work on newly improved perovskite oxides materials, bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution/reduction
reactions, have major implications to energy conversion devices such as fuel cells
and rechargeable metal-air batteries.
Congratulations Brandon McReynolds!