All News

Last Friday, the Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems, M-WET, was honored to host Mr. Christian Newton, Chief of Staff, Office of Science at the US Department of Energy. We appreciated his interest in our research, laboratories, and in meeting our team members. We enjoyed the visit, Christian, and we hope you can visit M-WET again soon.

Please join us in congratulating M. Scott Shell on being elected an AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers) Fellow! Fellows are the AIChE’s highest grade of membership, achieved only through election by the Board of Directors, and are recognized for their significant professional accomplishments and contributions to engineering!

We are excited to announce that M-WET's External Advisory Board member, Dr. Carl Willis of Kraton, has been selected to be a 2025 POLY Fellow. The POLY Fellows awards recognize excellence in all ways that POLY members advance our field of polymer science, either through scientific accomplishments, service to the profession, or both.

Congratulations to Dr. William E. "Bill" Mickols upon his election today as a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Class of 2025. Dr. Mickols was recognized for "the discovery, development, and implementation of next-generation desalination membranes and related water filtration systems."

Chris Evans, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Leveraging dynamic covalent bonds for control of mass and ion transport in polymer networks. February 15th, EER 3.640/3.642 or by Zoom: 828 685 7838

New Opportunities for Membrane Technology in the Production of Next Generation Gene Therapies January 31st, 1:00 – 2:00pm CDT, EER 3.640/3.642 or on Zoom: 828 685 7838

Congratulations to our new M-WET "graduate," Matthew Landsman, on his new job as an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University! He is beginning his new position this month (January 2025).

The Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology (TAMEST) awards Joan F. Brennecke and Benny D. Freeman with the 2025 Hill Prize in Engineering “for developing advanced, stable and energy-efficient membrane technology to separate olefins (such as ethylene and propylene) from paraffins, a process crucial in many industries including petrochemicals.”

Congratulations to M-WET's own Timothy Quah, for successfully defending his doctoral dissertation on, "Algorithmic Advances for Extending Polymer Field-Theoretic Simulations" at UC Santa Barbara under Glenn H. Fredrickson, December 2024.

This lecture provides insights into the interactions controlling the characteristic nano-morphology of Nafion membranes and how this translates into hydration and transport properties of this benchmark material.