Fall 2015 Undergraduate Research Poster Competition Winners
The department is pleased to announce winners of the fall 2015 Undergraduate Research Poster Competition:
First Place
Nayan Mukherjee (Johnston Group)
Surfactants for Enhanced Oil Recovery
$100 prize
Nayan’s research focuses on studying the interfacial chemistry of surfactants used to generate foams for Enhanced Oil Recovery. The goals are to increase the volume of crude oil that can be extracted from oil reservoirs and to sequester carbon dioxide that would otherwise be going into the atmosphere underground.
Second Place
Erin Maines (Willson Group)
High-x Block Copolymers based on Vinyl Pyridine for Microelectronic Applications
$75 prize
Erin works with block copolymers for application in the microelectronics industry. Block copolymers are a good alternative to the current industry processes to create transistors and chips, and can form features that are smaller than the current features in the industry to allow microelectronics to continue to shrink.
Third Place
Bijal Patel (Ekerdt Group)
Area-Selective Atomic Layer Deposition Enabled by Microcontact Printing
$50 prize
Bijal works to develop new fabrication techniques for microelectronics manufacturing. Through the use of Microcontact printing and atomic layer deposition, Bijal and the Ekerdt group hope to provide a robust, low cost, alternative to traditional photolithography and etch processes. This technique will greatly support rapid prototyping in academic labs and in biotech applications.
Thanks to graduate student judges Joseph Cheng, Caleb Alexander, Bart Dear, Camila Saez Cabezas, Amro Elhag, Lauren Cordova, Cara Touretzky and Shruti Jain. Also, thanks to the AIChE student chapter for providing this semester’s prizes.
Students are encouraged to participate in this competition, which takes place every semester in the McKetta Study Hall, to showcase their research and sharpen their presentation skills.
Tags: Area-Selective Atomic Layer Deposition, Bijal Patel, Cockrell School of Engineering, Ekerdt Group, Erin Maines, Fall 2015, High-x Block Copolymers, Johnston Group, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, Microcontact Printing, Microelectronic Applications, Nayan Mukherjee, Surfactants for Enhanced Oil Recovery, Texas ChE, The University of Texas at Austin, undergraduate research poster competition, Vinyl Pyridine, Willson Group