(Excerpt) 

UMBC chemical engineering students take second place in national Jeopardy competition

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | NOVEMBER 23, 2020 | MEGAN HANKS

Last weekend, four UMBC students earned second prize in the national Jeopardy competition hosted virtually by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The team competed against 12 other teams at the national level after winning the Mid-Atlantic regional competition in October. 

UMBC’s team included Cameron Sloan ‘21, Nicholas Balasus ‘21, Ellie Vonderhorst ‘22, and Chris Ashby ‘21, all chemical engineering majors. Sloan is chair of the Jeopardy project in UMBC’s student chapter of AIChE, the professional organization for chemical engineers. He explains that participating in the competition was an important moment for the group, though the move to an online format wasn’t ideal. 

“Competing virtually had its challenges, for sure, but all in all it was a fantastic experience,” says Sloan. “I wish we would have had the opportunity to meet our competitors and be able to speak to them, rather than just seeing their digitized faces on our screens.”

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Congratulations to Fabian Amurrio!

excerpt from

American Chemical Society honors UMBC’s Lee Blaney for commitment to mentoring student researchers

Blaney said that he was honored and humbled to receive the 2020 George L. Braude Award for his efforts to mentor undergraduate and graduate students in research. During his lecture, Blaney emphasized the impact of his own mentors on his mentoring approach, and said that his mentors Arup SenGupta (Lehigh University), Desmond Lawler (University of Texas at Austin), and Lynn Katz (University of Texas at Austin) changed his life. Blaney has incorporated their advice and his own experiences into his mentoring approach at UMBC. “Seeing my students succeed is the most gratifying aspect of being a professor,” he says. 

Even though the event could not be held in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of Blaney’s students were able to attend the virtual lecture. Blaney noted that the presence of his students made the celebration even more special. Upon receiving the Braude Award, Blaney emphasized that “this is our award” to his students. 

Man receiving award from woman. Both are wearing masks.

Lee Blaney, left, receiving his award from Louise Hellwig of Morgan State University. Photo courtesy of Hellwig.

Congratulations to Utsav Shashvatt for the first place winner for the first CSAWWA virtual poster competition! 

All three winners are 

1^st Place – Utsav Shashvatt (UMBC, Recovery of Ammonium, Phosphorus, and Potassium from Source-Separated Urine Using Donnan Dialysis)

2nd Place – Liu Jiang (UMD College Park, Understanding the Role of Microbiological Processes in Removing PFAS from Environment)

3rd Place – Xiaojue Chen (UMD College Park, Adaptation and Acclimation of Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation (Anammox) Process to Environmental Conditions and Inhibitors)

Erick Gutierrez was selected as the recipient of the Young Professionals Award in Upstream and Downstream Processing for his poster “Microscale Chromatography toolkits for rapid screening and purification of therapeutic proteins” presented at the 2019 Orlando Meeting. 

This award recognizes excellence by a non-student member of the BIOT 3M Separation and Purification Sciences Division and ACS-BIOT (American Chemical Society’s Division of Biochemical Technology) for Young Professionals in Upstream & Downstream Processing. This award is given to professionals 35 years of age or younger who present outstanding research in upstream and downstream processing at the poster session as part of the Division of Biochemical Technology (BIOT) programming at the ACS annual meeting.  The 3M Company is the sponsor for this award.

The 2019 BIOT Award for Young Professionals in Upstream & Downstream Processing will be awarded as part of 2020 Spring National Meeting, in Philadelphia, PA from March 22 - 26.

Research Overview: 

Biography:

Erick graduated from UMBC with a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering (’18).  He worked at Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) located in UMBC, as a Systems Design Engineer focused on the product development of microfluidic devices used for downstream processing of therapeutic proteins.

He began his career in microfluidics by working as the team leader of an undergraduate team in Dr. Govind Rao's sensors class, tasked with developing a microfluidic debubbler for his Bio-MOD project funded by DARPA. He was then offered an internship position in the systems design team of the Bio-MOD project under the mentorship of Dr. Abhay Andar, where he was tasked with optimizing and making the bioprocesses used for the G-CSF purification runs, as well as developing, manufacturing, and validating microfluidic devices for downstream processing.

Upon graduation, he was offered a full-time position as a Research Associate in the Bio-MOD project, joining for the second phase of the project in which we had to optimize our process for animal studies. We developed several microfluidic devices, such as mixers, holders, novel and fully customizable chromatography micro-columns (µcols), and multi-functional integrated chips using thermo-plastic solvent bonding methods and adhesives. Our work for "Low‐cost customizable microscale toolkit for rapid screening and purification of therapeutic proteins," was recently published. (https://doi.org/10.1002/bit.26876) We further expanded our microfluidics research by using wood instead of plastics as our primary material, which led to the publication of “Wood Microfluidics,” published in Analytical Chemistry in 2019.