A partnership between researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Houston has continued to flourish, and expanded to another professor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, after the National Science Foundation chose their Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) proposal – the development of dynamically operated, smaller scale reactors that can process distributed feedstock – for a $2 million award.

Cullen College engineering professors collaborate to solve monolayer catalyst mystery

The South Texas Section (STS) of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) chose a paper written by two UH Cullen College of Engineering professors and their Ph.D. students for its Best Fundamental Paper Award.

The award was presented Tuesday at the monthly STS-AIChE meeting in Galveston.

Two professors at the UH Cullen College of Engineering have discovered that size is critical to the performance of the monolayers of catalysts, the fundamental substance that speeds up reactions in all industries from petrochemical to manufacturing.

In the field of catalysis, which uses one material to initiate or speed up a chemical reaction, there are few researchers in the world as well-known or respected as Lars Grabow.

Karun Kumar Rao, a first-year chemical engineering doctoral student in the UH Cullen College of Engineering, has been offered a place in the esteemed NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF) program for his research on solid-state batteries.

The UH Cullen College of Engineering hosted this year’s Southwest Catalysis Society (SWCS) Symposium on April 22, 2016. The symposium provides an opportunity for engineering students from across the region to present their research to an esteemed crowd of international researchers and industry professionals.

Each year, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) presents travel awards to outstanding students from across the nation to present their research at the annual AIChE meeting. Sashank Kasiraju, a chemical and biomolecular engineering graduate student at the UH Cullen College of Engineering, is one of just 20 students to receive this honor from AIChE’s Catalysis and Reaction Engineering (CRE) Division this year.

Researchers at the UH Cullen College of Engineering have synthesized and characterized a novel metallic monolayer catalyst with far superior catalytic properties than those currently used in industry.

Last year, a professor and student in the Cullen College’s chemical engineering department published an article in the journal Science that revealed the secrets behind gold’s unexpected oxidation activity.