One of AIChE’s Board of Directors’ Awards, The Founders Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Chemical Engineering, is presented to engineers who have had a profound impact on the way chemical engineering is applied, and whose achievements have advanced the profession in any of its aspects. 

Vilas Pol, Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering, was one of three Purdue Engineering researchers awarded a grant from the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP). These grants will be provided to 81 institutions across 35 states in Fiscal Year (FY) 2022.

Neuropathic pain (NP) affects nearly 16 million Americans. It happens when the nervous system is damaged or not working properly. Diabetes accounts for about 30 percent of NP cases, with other culprits including alcoholism, shingles, phantom pain from amputation, central nervous disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and trauma or surgeries with resulting nerve damage.

Determining whether materials will be both stable during their use and easy to break down afterward is difficult and costly. Predicting these properties poses a major roadblock on the path from materials discovery to applications.

Jessica E. Torres has been named as one of 34 inaugural Trailblazers in Engineering (TBE) Fellows. These are PhD students or postdocs in engineering or related disciplines at U.S. research universities, selected not only for their outstanding scholarly achievements but also for their potential impact in expanding representation and diversity in engineering.