UVa engineers strut their stuff

Visitors listened intently as Robert Davis described how the odd contraption in the University of Virginia chemical engineering lobby worked.
Four years ago, Davis, a chemical engineering professor, challenged his class of first-year students to create a biodiesel converter for a fictional farmer.
The students successfully built the device — a blue metal frame with three plastic containers connected to the top and a tube running to a cylinder, which is where the converter mixes water, vegetable oil and gas.
He wanted the students to learn how chemical engineering plays a role in the real world, he told the visitors.

That was the theme of the day Saturday as the UVa School of Engineering & Applied Science held an open house for prospective students and their parents.
The event included tours of numerous labs where professors and students explained what they do. Visitors also could see and learn about many exhibits created by students.
At around noon in Wilsdorf Hall, chemical engineering professor Mark Aronson showed visitors the undergraduate teaching laboratory.
This is where students “start to apply what they’ve learned” during their first two years at UVa, he told one group.
Students use the lab to conduct experiments in chemical engineering, including one station where they can focus on biotechnology. At the station, Aronson told the group, students can create green fluorescent proteins, similar to how they might one day find themselves “making a new chemical for Merk,” a pharmaceutical company.

In the chemical engineering building, graduate students Jeremy Fowler and Nupur Dutta explained their work in microscopic world of nanotechnology.
They used a poster to help describe their complex work and how nanotechnology is a part of everyday life.
The poster showed that nanotechnology is used in sunscreens, shaving cream, toothpaste, diapers, salad dressing, milk and more.

Nanotechnology is even used to make stronger bed liners in Hummers.
“Nano composites are everywhere,” Fowler told one group.
The open house closed in the afternoon following a presentation by former astronaut and associate dean for graduate programs Kathy Thornton.