Despite challenges of the global pandemic, CBE faculty, staff and students remain resilient and focused on our mission.
In the spring and summer terms, we successfully taught fully online, then offered about 60 percent of classes face-to-face this fall. Enrollment numbers stayed strong, with approximately 725 undergraduate and 60 graduate students enrolled in the fall term. Campus closures in March allowed faculty with prior expertise in remote teaching to lead the rapid pivot to online and hybrid courses, while maintaining the efficacy of laboratory-intensive classes like biology and summer field session.
Students adjusted well to the changes and greatly appreciated faculty efforts, as evident from this feedback regarding online field session, “[F]aculty did a fantastic job…I feel like I learned a lot! This course was very hard but now I feel that I can go out and kill it in my job next month!”
Our faculty had great success in receiving national and international accolades this year. Joseph Samaniuk and Kevin Cash were awarded NSF CAREER Awards, bringing the department total to eight winners. Recent developments also led to discussions surrounding diversity, inclusion and access and how the department can be an ally against social injustice. Please join me in celebrating our renowned faculty and students and their achievements as the department looks forward to another year.
Tomorrow may bring new challenges, but we will continue to face them because WE are Mines.
Anuj Chauhan
Department Head
Professor Jason Ganley held this role for the last 5 years. We thank him for doing an amazing job!
Alumnus and emeritus professor Vestal retires
Vestal '62, MS '69, PhD '73 has worked for the department for the last 20 years. After graduating, Vestal worked at Marathon Oil Company until January 1997 and in spring 1998 he was hired on as Mines faculty. We wish him well in retirement!
The pandemic saw the department's capstone course - summer field session - transition to a remote setting. Previously the course had been taught in a face-to-face setting in the "Unit Ops" building.
Pak will officially join the department in spring 2021. He received his BS in Chemical Engineering from MIT and his PhD from UT Austin. Pak previously worked as a postdoc in the Chemistry Department at the University of Chicago. We look forward to having Pak join the Mines CBE team!
New Office of Graduate Studies Dean Timothy Barbari
Barbari '80 joined Mines in fall 2020. He obtained his BS in Chemical and Petroleum Refining Engineering and later his MS (UC Berkeley) and PhD (UT Austin). We are excited to have a fellow alumnus return to Mines!
Yeung accepted into research symposium at NC State University
The award is highly selective and given out annually at the undergraduate research symposium at NC State University, “Future Leaders in Chemical Engineering.”
Chloe Archuleta is attending Northwestern University for graduate school. Although she was accepted into the NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship Program, she ended up taking a NDSEG Fellowship instead! When speaking of CBE faculty at Mines, Chloe says, "You pushed us hard, but you always always always believed in us and did everything you could to watch us succeed."
Samantha Inks won $1500 in the GPA Midstream Association Rocky Mountain Chapter Oil & Gas Goodwill Card Contest! She developed a small flyer to help explain the positive attributes of the oil and gas industry. Her flyer will be distributed to help point to the benefits of the industry to everyday life.
Lanier receives fellowship
Olivia Lanier received the highly prestigious Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for her proposal titled "Transport of environment-responsive Jekyll-Hyde nanoparticles across heterogeneous interfaces for improved drug delivery."
Ajay Mehta is the General Manager for New Energies Research & Technology at Shell. He leads a global team of over 100 scientists and engineers dedicated to developing technology solutions to meet the demand for more and cleaner energy. Over the course of his 24 year career at Shell, he has assumed a broad range of technical and leadership roles in the company, including assignments in Upstream Production, Operations, CO2 Mitigation, Project Engineering and Technology Management. He is a subject matter expert in natural gas hydrates and served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Society of Petroleum Engineers.
Ajay holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, India, a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines, and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Roger Rueff '78, MS '83, PhD '85 play becomes large-name film
The fall 2019 issue of this newsletter contained an error. It should be corrected that Mark Furlong recruited Roger Rueff '78, MS '83, PhD '85 to work at the Amoco Oil Company research center, which led to Rueff's involvement with a local community theatre and his eventual interest in plays and playwriting. Through those independent interests and pursuits, Rueff eventually became involved at Chicago Dramatists, where connections led to an opportunity for him to adapt his play Hospitality Suite to a screenplay for the movie The Big Kahuna. Read the full story here.
We'd love to reconnect with alumni! Send
us an email with your news and updates at CBE+Alumni@mines.edu.
SUPPORT CHEMICAL & BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING
We would like to thank all of our alumni and friends who have donated to the department through the Mines@150 and #idigmines campaigns or through separate donations. A gift to the Colorado School of Mines Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is an investment in the future. To learn more about supporting the department, contact the Mines Foundation.
