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UK-AIChE Attends National Student Conference

December 06, 2019

The UK students represented the AIChE student chapters for the chemical engineering programs in Lexington and at the College of Engineering Extended Campus in Paducah.

Recently, 28 chemical engineering undergraduates traveled to Orlando, Florida to attend the national student conference of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The student conference was held November 8-11, in conjunction with the AIChE Annual Meeting. The UK students represented the AIChE student chapters for the chemical engineering programs in Lexington and at the College of Engineering Extended Campus in Paducah.

At the conference, the UK-AIChE chapters and participating students received numerous honors and awards, including:

Outstanding Student Chapter Award for the Lexington Chapter. The AIChE Outstanding Student Chapter Award is presented to 10% of all student chapters nationally. This year’s award was the 34th such award for the UK Lexington Student Chapter over the last 36 years.

Outstanding Student Chapter Award for the Paducah Chapter. The Paducah chapter won this award for the 18th consecutive year. The Paducah chapter has received this award every year since its inception.

In addition, several students participated in a K-12 Outreach Competition, where they put on educational science-related demos for second-grade students. This was the first time this event has occurred and the UK-AIChE chapter presented the “Liquid Layers” demo, which introduces concepts of density and liquid separation to the students.

Also, 12 UK students participated in the AIChE undergraduate research student poster competition. From Lexington: Rollie Mills, James Obute, Claire Rowlands, Ramy Ghanim, RJ Vogler, Shelby Browning, Skyler Hornback, and Trisha Nickerson. From Paducah: Rana Turkmani, Lauren McManus, Mercedes Haley, and Joshua Ausenbaugh. 

Six of the students received poster awards:
  
Shelby Browning

  •  Title: A Study of the Physical Properties of Plastic Derived Fuel Oil Produced from Waste Plastic
  •  Award: 1st  Place
  • Category: Environmental Science and Engineering

Ramy Ghanim

  •  Title: Novel Strategy for Functional Oligopeptide Conjugation inside the Mesospores of Silica Nanoparticles
  • Award: 2nd Place
  • Category: Materials Engineering and Sciences 

Rollie Mills 

  • Title: Temperature Swing Adsorption of Perfluoroorganics By Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) Hydrogels and Membranes
  • Award: 1st  Place
  • Category: Separations

James Obute

  • Title: investigating the Microstructural Effects of Electrode Compression on Redox Flow Battery Performance
  • Award: 3rd  Place
  • Category: Fuels, Petrochemicals, and Energy

Jacob Page

  • Title: Fabrication of Novel Reactive Membrane for the Degradation of Polyflourinated Compounds
  • Award: 2nd  Place
  • Category: Separations

RJ Vogler

  • Title: Synthesis of Polymeric Membranes with Carboxylic Acid and Thiol Groups for Ion Adsorption Applications
  • Award: 3rd  Place
  • Category: Materials Engineering and Sciences

Faculty advisors for the AIChE student chapters are Prof. J. Zach Hilt (Lexington) and Prof. Derek Englert (Paducah).