The Covestro Distinguished Lectureship (a continuation of the Bayer Distinguished Lectureship) is presented annually by the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, and recognizes excellence in chemical education, outreach and research. The lecture is sponsored by Covestro LLC, a world-leading supplier of high-tech polymer materials.

Jennifer Sinclair Curtis, Dean of the College of Engineering, Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering

University of California, Davis

Thursday, April 30, 2020

5:00pm Benedum 102

Sowing the Seeds of Diversity in Engineering

The lack of women and underrepresented minorities (URM) in engineering is a problem that no single solution can address. Not only are there the pipeline issues, but the challenges these groups face in navigating their careers need to be addressed. This presentation will share some of the activities/practices that have been adopted at the University of California, Davis to sow the seeds of diversity.  The engineering college has launched Avenue-E, a community college transfer program designed to eliminate barriers that hold back women and underrepresented minorities in engineering and computer science. Another core component of changing the landscape is ensuring that women and URM in engineering see other women and URM at all levels. In 2012, UC Davis received a NSF-ADVANCE grant which aimed to increase the participation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers. Among many projects, more than 1,000 faculty members have been trained about best practices for faculty recruitment and implicit bias. Central oversight of faculty hiring to ensure diversity and inclusivity has been established, and expected contributions to diversity from all applicants for faculty positions. Contributions to diversity are expected in all merit and promotion review actions, and superior contributions to diversity are recognized and rewarded in review actions. Eight years later, UC Davis has shown dramatic changes at all levels. Forbes named UC Davis the Best College for women in STEM fields, based on a metric that includes persistence to graduation and the value of education received.

Friday, May 1, 2020

9:30am Benedum 102

Flow Behavior of Cohesive and Aspherical Particles in Hoppers and Shear Cells

The discrete element method (DEM) is a powerful simulation tool which provides the details of the flow of individual particles and facilitates quick parametric studies, eliminating the need for expensive experimental testing. This presentation will outline advances in DEM to simulate the motion of cohesive and/or aspherical particles.  Aspherical grains are described either as perfect cylinders or disks of varying aspect ratio or described using a linked and overlapping sphere approach.  Using this linked approach, the flow of flexible aspherical particles can also be treated via a bonded particle model which incorporates normal and shear forces as well as bending and torsional moments.  The bonded particle model also allows for breakage of aspherical particles during impact.  Cohesion between particles is described as originating either from surface moisture, described by a liquid bridge force model in the case of pendular liquid bridges, or from van der Waals interactions, described by the adhesive JKR model.  DEM simulations are validated via experiments of hopper flow/discharge and measurements of particle-phase stress in a ring shear cell.

Jennifer Sinclair Curtis is Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Dean of Engineering at University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the development and validation of particle flow models which have been extensively adopted by both commercial and open source CFD software packages. She was the first to partner with ANSYS Fluent to greatly expand the multi-phase simulation capability of the code which is used by 96 of the 100 biggest industrial companies in the world and over 40,000 customers. Her particulate flow models are also included in the CFD Research Corporation software package and the open-source CFD codes OpenFOAM and MFIX. She is a Fellow of AAAS, ASEE and AIChE. She is recipient of AIChE’s Particle Technology Forum’s Lifetime Achievement Award, a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Award, AIChE's Thomas-Baron Award in Fluid-Particle Systems, ASEE’s Chemical Engineering Lectureship Award, ASEE’s CACHE Award for Excellence in Computing in Chemical Engineering Education, ASEE's Sharon Keillor Award for Women in Engineering, and the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. She also received the Van Antwerpen Award – the highest award for service to the Institute by the AIChE Board of Directors. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and her BS in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University which recently recognized her as a distinguished engineering alumna. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the National Academies’ Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology.