As we start off 2024, let's look back at some of Chemical Engineering’s highlights over the last year.
2024 was an exceptional year of change. Firstly, Dr. Robin Hutchinson was officially appointed in the position of Department Head. His priority will be continuing with the Reimagining Engineering Education initiative, leading the department in identifying opportunities to redesign the undergraduate curriculum, to align with this initiative. He also plans to put together a leadership team that has the experience to drive the research and teaching initiatives in the department, promoting excellence in graduate student training and research. The year has proved to be fruitful for faculty and students, who have received numerous prestigious internal and external awards and scholarships. Our early career researchers in particular have exceeded expectations, being exceptionally active in outreach and receiving notable grants and awards.
Highlights of Faculty and staff awards and recognitions include:
2024 was an exceptional year for research with our faculty awarded over $10.5 million in research funding. This includes Dr. James McLellan who is leading an NSERC CREATE program grant of $1.65M and an additional $2.1M of cash and in-kind support, Plastics Affordances Through Science and Technology Innovation for Circular Solutions (PLASTICS), which aims to give 78 postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates from across Canada the technical and professional skills needed to help create a circular economy for plastic waste. Kevin De France is leading an interdisciplinary project between four universities and five partner organizations to increase agricultural sustainability by repurposing canola meal. With $3.2 million in funding provided over four years by the NSERC SSHRC Sustainable Agriculture Research Initiative the group intends to refine canola meal into a series of eco-friendly products and understand the policy and financial implications for these changes.
Ehssan Koupaie received an NSERC RTI to support several research projects toward the visionary goal of making organic waste valorization more appealing for large-scale industrial applications. Laura Wells and Lindsay Fitzpatrick (with Brian Amsden) each received a competitive NFRF Exploration grants (the only two awarded in Smith Engineering) for their respective work on surgical mesh as a prototype to develop humanized cellular and tissue models to test sex-specific immune responses to implantable medical devices and developing a sustainable wound dressing for diabetic foot ulcers using genetically engineered living microalgae to resolve chronic inflammation and promote wound closure. Martin Guay also received $540,000 from Mitacs Program to support the Stratotegic Network, a project that proposes to create a simple, inexpensive, environmentally friendly, and effective distributed control mechanism for the design of air-based wireless internet systems for deployment in remote regions of Canada. Finally, the department received four Bruce Mitchell Research Program grants (totaling over $800,000), which will support new PhD students supervised by Michael Cunningham, Marianna Kontopoulou, Dominik Barz, Carlos Escobedo, Cao Thang Dinh, and Rachel Baker.
We are excited to have continued several in-person events. The Departmental Seminar Series continued, including the David W. Bacon Distinguished seminar (coordinated by Nicolas Hudon), where we were joined by Dr. Miroslav Krstic from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego. Dr. Krstic discussed "Machine Learning: An enabler to PDE control". Many of our students participated in booths hosted by Laura Wells, Lindsay Fitzpatrick, Rachel Baker and Peter Gilbert in Science Rendezvous Kingston. Laura Wells and Sophie Felleiter also judged the first ever Chemical Engineering Chemical and Biotechnologies for Sustainability Award at the Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Science fair. In addition to presenting at numerous national and international conferences including a strong presence at the Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, our students presented at our in-house poster day. We also celebrated Black Histories and Futures Month and International Women in Engineering Day by showcasing the research and experiences of several undergraduate and graduate students. Our junior faculty, Kevin De France and Peter Gilbert hosted the annual Chemical Connections Career Event, where alumni from industry and academia returned to Queen’s to talk and network with our undergraduate (including first-year students) and graduate students.