Year: 2019

Professor Amod Ogale received the prestigious University Research, Scholarship, and Artistic Achievement Award (URSAA) from President James Clements. The award recognizes Clemson University faculty whose work has been acknowledged at the highest levels nationally and internationally. URSAAA winning faculty are lifetime appointees and participate in a yearly celebration of faculty achievements.

Dr. Amod Ogale, Dow Chemical Professor of Chemical Engineering, has served on the Clemson faculty for over 33 years. He also serves as the Director of Center for Advanced Engineering Fibers and Films (CAEFF). Prof. Ogale was honored with Clemson URSAA Award for being inducted as a FELLOW of three different professional societies for his life-time achievements and contributions to the American Carbon Society (ACS), Society for Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering (SAMPE), and Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). He has also won the Graffin Lecturer Award from ACS, and the SABIC Composites Educator Award from SPE.

He has taught 12 different undergraduate and graduate courses, graduated 41 PhD and MS students, and mentored 8 post-doctoral research associates. Prof. Ogale has published over 150 refereed papers and been the principal investigator or co-investigator on over 50 research grants worth over $ 40 million.

Sagar Kanhere won the Best Poster Award at the Society of Plastics Engineers ACCE Automotive Composites Conference, Novi, MI, September 2019 for research entitled, “Petroleum Pitch-based Carbon Fibers With Modified Transverse Microstructure And Enhanced Properties,” co-authored by Dr. Victor Bermudez, Caroline Christopher, Dr. Sam Lukubira, and Professor Amod Ogale.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), through University of Delaware, has awarded Clemson University’s Center for Advanced Engineering Fibers and Films (CAEFF) $ 2 million for carbon fiber research.

The project, led by Professor Ogale, is developing high-performance, cost-competitive carbon fibers for composite feedstock/manufacturing processes.

Back in November Dr. Scott Husson ran the Moab Trail Marathon! The marathon was held in Moab, Utah and is listed as a Trail Runner Magazine “Bucket List” Race.

The Moab Trail is described as unique and wild. The canyons around Moab are unlike anywhere in the world, and this course conquers some of the most spectacular. Runners travel through narrow canyons with spectacular vertical walls on both sides and along the rim-tops of deep canyons with spectacular vistas every direction. The terrain changes frequently to keep the miles clicking and includes narrow single-track, rugged jeep trails, sandy washes, ‘Moab-style slickrock’, a short section of dirt road, a few sections of no-track, a very old mining trail and a couple sections of fixed line traverse. Views will take your breath away, and include the spectacular red rocks of “Behind the Rocks Wilderness” and “Amasa Back” area, also view the sheer vertical walls of Pritchett, Hunter and Kane Creek Canyons and views into Canyonlands National Park.

Dr. Husson trained for 5 months in preparation for the marathon, mostly running trails at Paris Mountain State Park in Greenville. Even then, he described the course as really challenging. He was thankful for every rest station along the course! Dr. Husson ran the race with four friends and everyone in their group was able to finish the course. Dr. Husson says that now he’s taking things easy and thinking about what’s next!

Nicholas Gregorich from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering won first place at Clemson University’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition on November 8, 2019.

Nicholas won the PhD candidate category for his presentation, “Green Filtration for Cleaner Water.” He is advised by Dr. Eric Davis. Nick will go on to represent Clemson at the March 2020 Conference of Southern Graduate Schools (CSGS) 3MT competition in Birmingham, Alabama.

3MT is a research communication competition that challenges research higher degree students to present a compelling oration on their thesis and its significance in just three minutes in language appropriate to a non-specialist audience. Graduate students from all colleges at Clemson competed in preliminary rounds before all coming together for the finalist competition.

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering welcomes Dr. Heather Kulik, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Kulik’s seminar titled, “Accelerating the computational discovery of catalyst design rules and exceptions with machine learning”  will be held in 100 Earle Hall on Thursday, November 21st from 2:00 to 3:00 pm.

Over the past decade, first-principles computation has emerged as a powerful complement to experiment in the discovery of new catalysts and materials. In many cases, computation has excelled most in distilling rules for catalyst structure-property relationships in well defined spaces such as bulk metals into descriptors or linear free energy relationships. More development is needed of computational tools for them to show the same promise in emerging catalytic materials such as single-site metal-organic framework catalysts or single atom catalysts that have increased promise of atom economy and selectivity. In this talk, I will outline our efforts to accelerate first-principles (i.e., with density functional theory, or DFT) screening of open-shell transition metal catalysts with a focus on challenging reactions (e.g., selective partial hydrocarbon oxidation). We have developed tools that not only automate simulation but can be autonomously driven by decision engines that predict which simulations are most promising to be carried out. We also develop neural network machine learning models to accelerate prediction of catalyst reaction energetics and properties at a fraction of the cost of DFT. Paired with new estimates of when such models are reliable, I will show how we rapidly evaluate properties of 10k-100k catalysts in a fraction of the time that conventional first-principles simulation would require. We use such tools to accelerate the identification of design rules and exceptions to expectations when applied to the wider space of emerging single-atom and single-site catalysts.

CLEMSON — Clemson University Ph.D. student Allison Domhoff has received a $25,000 Hitachi High Technologies Electron Microscopy Fellowship to support research aimed at making energy grid-scale batteries more efficient and cost-effective.

Domhoff, a chemical and biomolecular engineering student, is working to develop nanocomposite materials for batteries that support energy generation at large wind and solar farms. The technology could reduce the cost of renewable energies, thus making them more prevalent in utility portfolios.

“These are like extremely large car batteries, 15 or 20 feet tall. They would store energy produced by wind and solar farms so during the night or when winds aren’t blowing, you could still harvest energy,” said Eric Davis, Domhoff’s faculty adviser and an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

Electron microscopy allows Domhoff to research nanometer-sized particles in the battery’s membrane so she can manipulate its surface chemistries to improve battery life and performance.

Domhoff has presented nationally at meetings of the American Chemistry Society (ACS) and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). She received a prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation and is one of 10 finalists for the national AIChE Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research Award, which will be announced in November.

Domhoff, who expects to graduate in May, hopes to continue her research in the private sector. She earned her undergraduate degree at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh before attending Clemson for Ph.D. studies.

“Clemson has all of the big-school funding and resources, but it’s a relatively small department so you get the one-on-one mentoring and collaboration,” she said.

Hitachi High Technologies America Inc. established the fellowship in 2014. Domhoff is the sixth recipient.

Hitachi High Technologies helped establish the university’s Electron Microscope Facility in the mid-1990s. It has steadily grown with Hitachi’s support and is housed at the Advanced Materials Research Laboratory (AMRL) in Anderson County about 15 minutes from Clemson’s main campus.

“Ms. Domhoff is clearly performing groundbreaking research and it appears likely that her work will be highly impactful. We at Hitachi are very happy that the electron microscopes at AMRL have been able to play an integral role in enabling Allison’s research,” said Phil Bryson, vice president and general manager of the Nanotechnology Systems Division at Hitachi High Technologies.

In the past year, the Electron Microscopy Facility at Clemson as added some of Hitachi’s most advanced microscopes.

“Our longstanding relationship with Hitachi has provided Clemson faculty and students with one of the nation’s premiere microscopy labs in which to learn and conduct research,” said Tanju Karanfil, Clemson vice president for research.

The facility is also used by the private sector for product development in the state’s automotive, aerospace, medical, electronics, textile and energy industries, among others.

“Our partnership with Hitachi has created a truly unique facility in the Southeast, which has greatly benefitted not only research and education at Clemson, but also product development and innovation in the private sector that will fuel the South Carolina economy,” said Electron Microscope Facility director Laxmikant Saraf. “I greatly appreciate Hitachi’s support.”

Douglas Hirt, associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences, thanked Hitachi High Technologies America Inc. for supporting the college’s students.

“These fellowships help enable our students to conduct cutting-edge research with the help of some of the best electron microscopes in the world,” Hirt said. “I congratulate Allison on winning this year’s fellowship. It is a well-deserved honor and a reflection of the quality of work she is doing under the guidance of Dr. Eric Davis.”

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering welcomes Dr. Sumit Sharma, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Ohio University. Dr. Sharma’s seminar titled, “Molecular Simulations of Adsorption and Self-Assembly of Surfactants on Metal Surfaces”  will be held in 100 Earle Hall on November 7th from 2:00 to 3:00 pm.

Adsorption of surfactants is a facile way of adjusting interfacial properties of metals, which has applications in electrochemistry, corrosion inhibition, heterogeneous catalysis and synthesis of anisotropic metal nanoparticles. The traditional viewpoint is that the adsorption of surfactant molecules on metals is driven by a strong affinity of the polar head group of surfactants for metals, and that surfactant molecules adsorb in a planar self-assembled monolayer (SAM). By employing atomistic and coarse-grained molecular simulations as well as statistical mechanics theory, we show that the traditional viewpoint is imprecise on many fronts. We demonstrate that the hydrophobic interactions between alkyl tails of surfactants play an active role in the adsorption process. Surfactants adsorb in various morphologies (planar SAM, cylinders and spheres) depending on their molecular geometry. Furthermore, adsorption free energy profiles of surfactants are function their aggregation state in the bulk phase – while the molecules infinite dilution strongly adsorb on to metals with no free energy barrier, surfactant micelles experience a long-range free energy barrier from the metal surface. Surfactant molecules strongly adsorb by disintegrating on the metal surface. From the knowledge of free energy profiles of surfactants at air-water and metal-water interface, we design new surfactant molecules that are expected to have better corrosion inhibition properties.

Dr. Sumit Sharma earned PhD in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University and was a post-doctoral research fellow at Princeton University. Prior to joining Ohio University, he worked as a Yield and Integration Engineer at Intel corporation. His research interests are in molecular simulations and statistical mechanics theory of soft matter, including proteins, polymers and surfactants.

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering welcomes Dr. Abhyudai Singh, an Associate Professor in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Mathematical Sciences, and Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.     Dr. Singh’s seminar titled, “Systems Biology in Single Cells:  A Tale of Two Viruses”  will be held in 100 Earle Hall on October 10th from 2:00 to 3:00 pm.

In the noisy cellular environment, expression of genes has been shown to be stochastic across organisms ranging from prokaryotic to human cells. Stochastic expression manifests as cell-to-cell variability in the levels of RNAs/proteins, in spite of the fact that cells are genetically identical and are exposed to the same environment. Development of computationally tractable frameworks for modeling stochastic fluctuations in gene product levels is essential to understand how noise at the cellular level affects biological function and phenotype. I will introduce state-of-the-art computational tools for stochastic modeling, analysis and inferences of biomolecular circuits. Mathematical methods will be combined with experiments to study infection dynamics of two viral systems in single cells.  First, I will show how stochastic expression of proteins results in intercellular lysis time and viral burst size variations in the bacterial virus, lambda phage. Next, I will describe our efforts in stochastic analysis of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) genetic circuitry. Our results show that HIV encodes a noisy promoter and stochastic expression of key viral regulatory proteins can drive HIV into latency, a drug-resistant state of the virus.

Abhyudai Singh earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India. He received master’s degrees in both mechanical and electrical & computer engineering from Michigan State University, and a master’s degree in ecology, evolution and marine biology from University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). After earning his doctoral degree in electrical & computer engineering in 2008, also from UCSB, he completed postdoctoral work in UC San Diego’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. From 2011 to 2017 he was an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Mathematical Sciences  at the University of Delaware, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017. The research interests of Abhyudai Singh are in dynamics, control, and identification of biomedical systems with applications to systems/synthetic biology and neuroscience.

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering welcomes Dr. Connie B. Roth, an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at Emory University.     Dr. Roth’s seminar titled, “Local Property Changes Near Interfaces in Nanostructured Polymer Blends and Films” will be held in 100 Earle Hall on October 3rd from 2:00 to 3:00 pm.

Nanostructured morphologies with extensive interfaces have become the hallmark of high performance multicomponent materials.  Understanding how local material properties change near interfaces is clearly crucial to designing an optimized morphology to create the correct global macroscopic characteristics desired from an amalgam of these local effects.  Contrary to the traditional textbook paradigm, our group has recently demonstrated that local dynamical properties across polymer domains can become strongly coupled upon welding of two dissimilar polymer interfaces creating broad gradients in local material properties.  Using a localized fluorescence technique, we have investigated how the local glass transition temperature T_g(z) changes across interfaces between two polymers with widely different bulk glass transition temperatures T_g^bulk.  Starting with a single interface between two semi-infinite domains (ΔT_g^bulk ≈ 80 K), we show that broad profiles in local T_g(z) across dissimilar polymer-polymer interfaces are established, spanning hundreds of nanometers and observed to be asymmetric relative to the composition profile.  A key finding of these results is the observation that the broad coupling of dynamics across the dissimilar polymer-polymer interface only occurs if this interface is welded together by annealing to equilibrium.  Efforts to understand what factors during polymer interface formation cause these broad profiles in local T_g(z) find that chain connectivity appears to be surprisingly important.  This is confirmed by measurements near silica substrates with tethered chains where low grafting densities (~10 vol% tethered chains) are observed to cause large +50 K increases in local T_g.  We now explore what property changes take place in multilayer systems during interface annealing using different experimental techniques with the goal of understanding how interfaces mediate dynamical coupling across dissimilar polymer domains.

Connie B. Roth, an Associate Professor of Physics at Emory University, received her Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Guelph, Canada.  Following postdoctoral positions at Simon Frazier University, Vancouver, and Northwestern University, Chicago, Dr. Roth joined Emory’s faculty in 2007.  Prof. Roth has received a NSF CAREER Award, ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator grant, was the 2009 recipient of the Division of Polymer Physics (DPOLY) UKPPG Polymer Lecture Exchange from the American Physical Society (APS), and most recently received the 2019 Fellow Award from the North American Thermal Analysis Society.  She is serving as the DPOLY Program Chair for the 2020 APS meeting.