ChE students win two out of three Alumni Association grad awards

Students in the chemical engineering department have won two of the three awards given annually to Lehigh graduate students by the Lehigh University Alumni Association.

Alexander Verdooren received the Graduate Student Leadership Award, while Ashish Pattekar received a certificate for honorable mention. Trisha Moller, a graduate student in mathematics, won the other honorable mention certificate.

The Graduate Student Leadership Award was established in 1990 by the Graduate Alumni Committee to honor "a graduate student in good standing who by exemplary scholarship, leadership and service to the university and graduate student committee, represents the highest traditions of Lehigh University."

Verdooren, the current president and former vice president of the Graduate Student Council, enrolled at Lehigh in the spring of 1999 and earned an M.S. in chemical engineering in June 2001. His master's project, titled "The Dynamics of Vapor Plumes," was supervised by Hugo Caram, professor of chemical engineering.

Verdooren is now working on an interdisciplinary Ph.D. project titled "Production of Metallic Foams from Ceramic Foam Precursors" with Caram; Helen Chan and Martin Harmer, professors of materials science and engineering; and Joachim Grenestedt, associate professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics. Verdooren is attempting to generate a steel foam by reducing a ceramic foam that is 90 percent iron oxide. His goal is to develop a lightweight metal with good mechanical properties.

The researchers have submitted a paper about their research to the Journal of Materials Science. Last year, Verdooren presented a poster on his project at the 2002 American Ceramic Society meeting in St. Louis. Last month, Chan traveled to Berlin to present a paper on the project at the Third International Conference on Cellular Metals and Metal Foaming Technology.

"Coming to Lehigh was definitely a great move," said Verdooren. "I have met wonderful people here and my experience has been very positive. I have had the opportunity not only to do research but also to be involved in activities that require and promote leadership."

Pattekar, the former president of the Chemical Engineering Graduate Students Association, combines chemical engineering with microelectronics in his research. He has developed a prototype microchemical system that produces hydrogen by reforming methanol and fits on a hand-held, chip-based device.

"Ashish has shown leadership in his research by leading an essentially one-man project," said Mayuresh Kothare, the P.C. Rossin Assistant Professor of chemical engineering and Pattekar's adviser. "His performance confirms what I saw at first glance during our initial meeting: a strong sense of curiosity, thirst for learning, superior creativity, and lastly, an almost inexhaustible source of energy and enthusiasm. All these qualities have combined to result in outstanding work at the intersection of microelectronics, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), microfluidics, microreactors and microchemical systems, and materials science."

Pattekar and Kothare have filed a provisional patent disclosure on the microreactor and method of producing hydrogen by reforming methanol. Their article titled "Novel microfluidic interconnectors for high-temperature and pressure applications" was published earlier this year by the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering," and they have submitted another article titled "A microreactor for hydrogen production in compact fuel-cell applications" to the Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems.