Conference Workshops | 2022 AIChE Mid-Atlantic Region Student Conference

WORKSHOP 1:	"The Transition from Undergraduate Research to Industry"
Ms. Sydney Sweet Process Engineer at Lummus Technology and Ms. Sara Abdelhamid Process Engineer I at Lummus Technology	Two accomplished Goldwater Scholars compare and contrast their experiences in research and industry. Beginning research early in their college careers, Sara and Sydney’s research experiences paved their paths through winning national research fellowships, making valuable connections, and transitioning into process engineering roles within the petrochemical and refining industry. Sara’s research revolving around mixing systems played a major role in securing her co-op as an Oral Care R&D Product and Process Development Scientist at J&J. During her co-op, Sara downscaled a semi-continuous Listerine manufacturing process to bench top mimic. Learning the value of computational research from her wide network at J&J, Sara took her time to explore the field of computational chemistry and successfully added another publication to her accomplishments. Sydney began her undergraduate research career developing nanoparticles for oral delivery of Type 2 Diabetes treatments. She transitioned from experimental to computational research in her next project, in which she used Python programming to model the morphological changes of Atmospheric Black Carbon (soot) in the atmosphere. Sydney later joined the Global Engineering department at Infineum as a co-op, where she worked on the planning and execution of capital projects in a petrochemical manufacturing environment. Utilizing the networks and skills collected over their varied research and industry experiences, upon graduation Sara and Sydney both joined Lummus Technology as process engineers, a role which combines foundational chemical engineering knowledge with skills in technical communication and plant design.
WORKSHOP 2:	"Computational Methods for Materials Design and Discover"
Prof. Joshua Young	The key to solving many of the world’s most urgent technological needs, such as better batteries, smaller electronics, and more efficient catalysts, often lies in the discovery and selection of new materials. However, given the astronomically large space of possible materials and the high cost and time required to experimentally synthesize and characterize each, how do you choose the right one for the job? Recently, the design of materials has been sped up by advances in computational methods and databases; by computing and screening the properties of hundreds to hundreds of thousands of possible compounds, it is possible to quickly narrow down to the most suitable ones for a given application. In this mini-workshop I will describe how computational tools, such as quantum mechanical calculations, molecular dynamics, and data science/machine learning, can be combined and used to make property predictions and supplement experiments. I will then show several examples of recent work from my group to demonstrate how these tools can be applied across a variety of fields.
WORKSHOP 3:	"2D MXenes for Energy Storage Applications"
Prof. Mengqiang (Mark) Zhao	From mobile devices to electric vehicles and to power grid, the needs for energy storage devices with high-energy density and high-power density continue to grow. The future of energy storage is enabled by nanomaterials. Among numerous nanomaterials, MXenes, a family of 2D transition metal carbides and nitrides, have emerged as one of the most promising energy storage materials. This is ascribed to their combined properties of metallic conductivity, large surface area, excellent cation intercalation capacity, and low ion diffusion barriers. Here, I would like to introduce our recent work on the application of MXenes in electrochemical energy storage devices such as supercapacitors and batteries. In particular, I will introduce our strategy to achieve a better design of the MXene-based electrode structures in order to fully utilize their electrochemical performance. The scale-up manufacturing of MXene-based electrodes will also be introduced.