On October 16 and 17, 2003, the Chemical Engineering Graduate Student Association (ChEGSA) at Carnegie Mellon University will hold its 25th Annual Chemical Engineering Research Symposium. As one of the first student-run research symposiums to be initiated, the Symposium at Carnegie Mellon University has grown to be one of the largest and most successful among major universities. Moreover, with this year marking its silver anniversary, we look forward to it being a particularly memorable event. As our keynote speaker, we are delighted to have Professor John M. Prausnitz from the University of California at Berkeley, who will discuss "Molecular Thermodynamics for Some Applications in Biotechnology."
The Symposium was initiated in 1979 when, as head of the department, Professor Tomlinson Fort suggested it to the governing members of ChEGSA as an opportunity to exchange research ideas within the department and to connect graduate students with industry. While the first Symposium in 1979 was a modest beginning, being primarily intradepartmental in nature, the following year saw the beginning of industrial participation. Since then, these industrial partnerships have become increasingly important each year and have helped the Symposium to gain the stature that it holds today as a model for other departments looking to establish similar forums. Without the generous financial support of numerous corporate sponsors and contributors, the continued growth of the Symposium would not be possible.
Indeed, the ChEGSA Symposium serves many important functions. Among these are providing graduate students the opportunity to present their research work to a diverse audience, fostering appreciation and awareness for the complexity of research being carried on within the sub-disciplines of chemical engineering, and cultivating the extensive ties and partnerships between the department and industry. In particular, as industrial participation has grown, the Symposium's provision for interaction between our graduate students and industry representatives outside a formal recruiting context has been a particularly attractive feature for both graduating students and industrial participants.
As in previous years, this year's 25th Annual ChEGSA Symposium will feature graduate student presentations that highlight research being carried out in the chemical engineering department in a variety of interdisciplinary areas. These include biomedical engineering, computer-aided design and optimization, environmental engineering, solid-state materials, and colloids, polymers, and surface science. Included in the two-day program, along with the student talks and keynote speaker, is a luncheon for industrial guests, student presenters, and faculty and a poster session with wine and cheese reception. At the conclusion of the Symposium, three awards will be given to the best student presenters, as well as two honorable mentions, all of which will be determined by faculty and industrial representatives serving as judges.
We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you in October. If you would like to attend or contribute or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at akoritni@andrew.cmu.edu or (412) 268-3892. Additional information, including industrial sponsors and abstracts for student talks as they become available, can also be found at the symposium's website, http://symposium.cheme.cmu.edu/.