{"id":59621,"date":"2014-12-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-engineering-students-win-awards-at-national-chemical-engineering-conference\/"},"modified":"2014-12-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T00:00:00","slug":"uri-engineering-students-win-awards-at-national-chemical-engineering-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/12\/uri-engineering-students-win-awards-at-national-chemical-engineering-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 engineering students win awards at national chemical engineering conference"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 December 12, 2014 \u2013 Three undergraduate students studying chemical engineering at the 溏心vlog免费B站 have won awards for their research at the 2014 student conference of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe awards were presented last month at the meeting in Atlanta.<\/p>\n

Julie Cuddigan, a sophomore from Johnston, won second place in the Food, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology division; John Neilsen, a junior from Wakefield, earned second place in the Environment division; and senior Erik Hurley of Jericho, Vermont, won third place in the Environment division. Cuddigan and Hurley were advised by 溏心vlog免费B站 Assistant Professor Samantha Meenach, while Neilsen\u2019s adviser was Associate Professor Geoffrey Bothun.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cThese three students put in a great deal of work on their research and they really earned these awards,\u201d said Bothun. \u201cPresenting at a large international conference was an excellent opportunity for them to grow personally and professionally, and we expect great things from them in the future. Their achievements showcase the cutting-edge research that is being conducted by the undergraduates in our department and our commitment to mentoring them.\u201d <\/p>\n


\n\tCuddigan\u2019s award-winning research focused on the development of a new pharmaceutical intended for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension, an incurable and life threatening disease characterized by abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries leading from the heart to the lungs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of our research is to develop and evaluate dry powder aerosols to be delivered directly to the lungs and surrounding arteries,\u201d said Cuddigan, who is enrolled in 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s International Engineering Program and hopes to eventually work as an engineer in Germany. \u201cMy project involved synthesizing this new pharmaceutical and characterizing it by size, morphology, and drug loading to see if our system is appropriate for inhalation therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tNeilsen won for his research on environmentally-friendly methods of dispersing oil in the event of an oil spill. The dispersants used to clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 were very effective but were also toxic and may have caused more harm than good.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are using food grade compounds in realistic testing scenarios to see what potential these compounds have as dispersants,\u201d Neilsen said. \u201cWe have also been studying different concentrations of solvents and how different types of solvents affect the oil dispersants.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tHurley\u2019s research examined the use of nanomaterials as a filter for use in industrial wastewater treatment. He incorporated nanomaterials like graphene oxide and carbon nanotubes into a hydrogel matrix to maximize the surface area of the nanomaterials to provide the best adsorption capacity.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIn the future I hope to end up in the biofuels industry helping bring more carbon neutral fuels to the market,\u201d he said. \u201cI am also considering going to graduate school to study the fluidization of particles.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPhotos courtesy of 溏心vlog免费B站 Chemical Engineering Dept<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 December 12, 2014 \u2013 Three undergraduate students studying chemical engineering at the 溏心vlog免费B站 have won awards for their research at the 2014 student conference of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. The awards were presented last month at the meeting in Atlanta. Julie Cuddigan, a sophomore from Johnston, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}