REU Site: From Bench to Market: Engineering Systems for High Efficiency Separations

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This new three year Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site program, From Bench to Market: Engineering Systems for High Efficiency Separations, at the University of Arkansas (UA) will provide a diverse cohort of undergraduate students with research opportunities in laboratories that focus on innovative separations research. The cost of chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing is dominated by the cost of separation processes to obtain a pure product. In fact, it is estimated that up to 10-15% of the world energy budget and 90% of pharmaceutical manufacturing costs are due to separation processes. Separations processes (where compounds of interest are recovered and purified from a mixture) are essential for almost every aspect of modern society, including: drinking water, therapeutics, food, and beverages. Ten undergraduate students will be selected each year to spend 10 weeks on the University of Arkansas campus performing research in the laboratory of a successful faculty member. In addition, students will participate in a commercialization assessment training series that will prepare them to think about the potential commercialization of traditional hypothesis-driven research early in the process. Through these experiences, the students will be part of developing and implementing cutting-edge technologies in the field of separations. Students will leave the REU program with an understanding of how academic research and commercialization work in tandem to solve humanities grand challenges.The overall objective of this REU site is to teach undergraduate students to create and execute a research plan involving separations while simultaneously exposing them to the skills needed to define and assess the commercial potential of their projects. The participants will work for 10 weeks in a research laboratory focusing on the development of separation techniques and/or materials, while they will also be led through a custom designed commercialization series based on the NSF I-Corps Lean Canvas methodology. Students will be paired with industrial mentors, in addition to successful separations researchers, for a unique training opportunity that exposes them to the full lifecycle of research. This combination of activities will prepare the students to become leaders in the chemical, biomedical, and pharmaceutical industries. Prospective REU students will be recruited utilizing a diverse network, including the George Washington Carver Project and schools with a high Native American population.