Month: April 2018

ChBE alumna Kavitha Ganesan Arms (ChE 2001) received the Outstanding Young Alumni Award at the Thomas Green Clemson Academy Banquet in April.

Selected by a review committee made up of senior faculty members, alumni, and college advisory board members, The Outstanding Young Alumni Award honors a College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences graduate age 40 or younger whose achievements have been significant to the field, their profession, or the welfare of society.

After completing both her Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering and master’s in bioengineering at Clemson University, Arms joined GE Energy in 2005 as a product safety engineer. Her accomplishments and expertise prompted her promotion to the technical lead position over Human Factors Engineering at GE’s Power and Water Facility and a later promotion to Executive Engineering Manager of Enterprise Risk Management and External Affairs at the same facility, where she oversaw all safety aspects related to anything developed on site. GE’s state-of-the-art Power and Water Advanced Manufacturing Facility in Greenville, SC houses the world’s largest gas turbine manufacturing facility and rapid prototyping for water processing, wind turbines, power gas engines, and nuclear power services. Due to the massive scale and potential hazards of the site, Arms’ job was imperative in ensuring that the engineering designs were safe for employees and the public. This year, Arms accepted her new position as EHS Manager of Chemical and Product Stewardship. During her career with GE, Arms’ safety initiatives have led to over a 60 percent decrease in unsafe events in labs and testing facilities and major improvements to the company’s overall safety culture.

In addition to her work with GE, Arms continues to give back to Clemson by serving on the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Professional Advisory Board and assisting with the student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering would like to thank Kavitha Arms for her continued support and congratulate her on this well deserved award.

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering welcomes Dr. Nripen Singh, Associate Director in Manufacturing Sciences and Technology from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cruiserath, Ireland, as a part of the ChBE Spring Seminar series. His seminar, titled “Next generation manufacturing facilities for expanding portfolio of biologics” will take place on Thursday, April 26th 2018 from 2:00-3:00pm in Earle 100.

Demand for innovative medicines that address serious diseases continues to grow for a number of therapeutic areas,
including oncology, fibrosis and immunoscience. Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) is working to tap global potential through its expanding portfolio of biologics, bringing treatments to patients across the globe. However, manufacturing biologics is avery complex and difficult task as it involves working with living cells. In addition, this is countered by challenges of an expanding pipeline and rapid development timelines that necessitate looking beyond the current platform philosophy for how to modify the process with the goal to increase overall productivity in a flexible manner. To address these challenges, BMS is integrating concepts of hybrid, modular and single-use technologies in recently constructed biologics manufacturing facilities in the Cruiserath, Dublin and Devens, Massachusetts campuses. The facilities combine latest technology in terms of flexible fed-batch cell culture and high-performance purification that will allow manufacturing of at various scales. With respect to the upstream process, use of multiple seed trains, single-use bioreactors, and perfusion culture would enable flexible high-titer processes. With respect to the downstream processes, numerous new technologies such as in-line dilution, high capacity membranes, multicolumn continuous chromatography, automated viralinactivation, and SPTFF are being incorporated to handle the increased titers being generated in the bioreactors. Through these advancements, BMS will accommodate both traditional as well as hybrid model for continuous manufacturing interchangeably to support multiple clinical and commercial products.

Nripen is an Associate Director in Manufacturing Sciences and Technology group within Global Product Supply organization in Cruiserath, Ireland at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He leads a team of downstream scientists to provide process improvements and identify new technologies for current and next generation products. Nripen first joined BMS in 2014 and led process development, characterization, technology transfer and commercial support work of mid to late stage biologics within Biologics Development Organization in Devens, MA. Nripen was also responsible for developing next generation manufacturing platform using concepts of continuous processing to increase specific productivity. Prior to joining BMS, Nripen worked for Merck Millipore for 5 years where he led a team of engineers for the development of chromatography and clarification products, including resins, depth filters, and membrane filters for protein purification. Nripen received his B.S. from Panjab University in 2002, and his PhD from the Clemson University in 2007, both in Chemical Engineering. He has co-authored over 25 publications, book chapters and patents. He is in the editorial board of mAbs Journal and serves as the guest editor for Current Opinion in Biotechnology and reviewer for several top-tier journals.

Clemson University’s AIChE Student Chapter recently attended the 2018 Southern Regional AIChE Conference held at LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Conference highlights included regional ChemE car competition, jeopardy, and a student paper and poster competition.

Upcoming President Andrew Ney represented our chapter at a Presidents Breakfast, where presidents from other AIChE student chapters were invited to attend. Ney learned valuable information about increasing attendance and the organization’s usefulness, as well as learning about a “sister school” program that other chapters are involved in. With this, our AIChE chapter can be paired with an international AIChE chapter.

“I think this is a very good opportunity, and will be something I plan to work on over the summer to have ready for next school year,” says Ney. He believed this event was the most beneficial to him, and the knowledge he gained will positively impact our organization.

One day of the conference was comprised of plant tours. Ney spoke on behalf of the BASF and brewery tours, “The BASF site was absolutely massive, and also quite modern in comparison to the plant I work at in Seneca.  We had to be split up into groups of five, and scattered around the plant because it was so big.  The brewery was a much smaller operation, but it was very interesting to see the start to end process of making beer.”

Our student chapter also took part in a Jeopardy competition. Of the two teams representing Clemson, one of them won the first round, beating two schools from Kentucky. Though eliminated during the next round, the team represented Clemson well. Following the Jeopardy competition was a ChBE career fair and social.

Additionally, research presentations and a ChemE Car competition took place. The Chem-E-Car team was able to compete in the competition, even after running into some technical difficulties. “Though we didn’t win, we did beat USC.” Says Hansen Mou. The car was made of aluminum and corrugated plastic, and powered by a magnesium-copper battery.

In all, Ney feels as if the trip turned out to be incredibly valuable to everyone.  “I can only speak to my experiences, but one of my favorite parts of the conference was the ability to talk to other Chemical Engineers that I would not normally be able to talk to. For example,  some other Clemson students and I had the privilege of sitting at a table with a group from Puerto Rico.  It was great to be able to ask questions about how other chapters operate as well as networking with industry professionals.” Our ChBE undergraduates were inspired by the Louisiana State AIChE members who sacrificed  their time to put together a great conference for all of the attending chapters.

Our AIChE student chapter looks forward to being able to bring another large group to Mississippi State next year.

Science as Art 2018 was held on Friday, April 6th from 12 PM – 6 PM in the Hendrix Center Atrium and was accompanied by a Meet the Artist reception. This year, 55 entries were submitted by hardworking students, faculty and staff at Clemson.

ChBE graduate student Jaime Idarraga-Mora participated in Clemson University’s Science as Art Exhibit and was awarded an Honorable Mention for his submission, titled “Water-Filtering Microtrees.”

The image of the trees that Jaime chose was originally a micro-scale scanning-electron microscopy picture of a membrane filter. This membrane hopefully will be used at high pressures to filter seawater to get drinkable water. It is composed of a porous polymer structure (the leaves of the tree), and robust vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes (the trunks). Similarly to the trunk of a tree, the goal of the carbon nanotubes is to provide mechanical resistance to the porous filter during use.

Science as Art is a challenge among Clemson University students and faculty, as well as secondary school students across the state. The goal of the challenge is to create and share a piece of visual art based on the contestant’s work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Visual representations of these fields bring scientists, artists and the general public together. Science as Art, which began in 2006, has attracted powerful and inspirational entries over the years. Previous winning entries are displayed around Clemson’s campus, and some have actually been featured in the Clemson exhibit at Artisphere in Greenville.

Students, faculty and staff are invited to submit works to Science of Art every year. These entries can be produced by individuals or teams. Entries are judged based on visual impact, effective communication, and innovation.