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

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This three-year REU site at the University of Arkansas will provide students with opportunities to participate in 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 that recover and purify compounds of interest 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 ten weeks 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. Students will leave the REU program with an understanding of how academic research and commercialization work together to solve society’s grand challenges. 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. The overall objective of this REU site at the University of Arkansas is to teach a diverse group of undergraduate students how to create and execute research involving separations, while simultaneously becoming aware of the skills needed to assess the commercial potential of their projects. They will be led through a custom designed commercialization series based on the NSF I-Corps Lean Canvas methodology. Students will work in successful laboratories across multiple departments including chemical engineering, civil engineering, biomedical engineering, and chemistry & biochemistry, The MAST Center provides the unique opportunity for the REU participants to interact with industry leaders in the separation field through industrial mentorships, plant tours, and live-streamed presentations at the close of the REU program. Students will leave the REU program with an understanding of how academic research and commercialization work in tandem to solve humanities grand challenges.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.