Academics

Department of Chemical Engineering honors four graduate students for excellence

Michael Janik (left) coordinated the chemical engineering department's annual research symposium.  Award recipients are (l-r) David Caldwell, Amin Espah Borujeni, Saratram Gopalakrishnan, and Thinh Le. Credit: Steven W. SmithAll Rights Reserved.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Four chemical engineering graduate students received awards at the department's annual research symposium held Sept. 16 at Celebration Hall in State College.

Michael Janik, John J. and Jean M. Brennan Clean Energy Early Career Professor and associate professor of chemical engineering, said, "Our awards program was established to recognize the essential contribution graduate students have in the department’s education and research missions."

The four recipients are Amin Espah Borujeni, David Caldwell, Saratram Gopalakrishnan and Thinh Le. Each of the awardees received $500.

Borujeni received a best paper award for "Translation Rate is Controlled by Coupled Trade-offs Between Site Accessibility, Selective RNA Unfolding and Sliding at Upstream Standby Sites." The paper was published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. His adviser is Howard Salis, assistant professor of chemical engineering.

Caldwell was the recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. It recognizes exceptional students who served as teaching assistants (TA) the previous academic year.

He was a TA for Janik in ChE 410: Mass Transfer, and for Antonios Armaou, associate professor of chemical engineering, in ChE 360: Mathematical Modeling in Chemical Engineering. Caldwell is advised by Janna Maranas, associate professor of chemical engineering.

Gopalakrishnan was awarded for best candidacy exam. All first-year graduate students taking the candidacy exam are eligible; this year, 18 students completed it. His adviser is Costas Maranas, Donald B. Broughton Professor of Chemical Engineering.

Le was the recipient of the Best Presentation Award for his talk, titled "Miscibility and Acid Strength are Critical Parameters for Contact Doping of Organic Photovoltaics with Strong Electrolytes." He is advised by Enrique Gomez, assistant professor of chemical engineering.

Last Updated January 9, 2015