News

Dr. Freeman has been awarded the 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers International Award.  This International Award is the highest honor bestowed by the Society of Plastics Engineers.  It recognizes lifetime achievements in the fields of polymer science or polymer/plastics engineering.  Nominees are recognized internationally by their peers for excellence in their fields.

Dr. Freeman was given the award based on his seminal contributions to plastics engineering, research, technology, service, and education in polymer membranes for low-energy gas and liquid separations.  An award symposium will be held at the SPE ANTEC meeting April 22-24, 2013 in Cincinnati.  The award comes with a $5,000 honorarium and a gold medal.

Hee Jeung Oh, a PhD student, has won a Doh Wonsuk Memorial Award from Korean Institute of Chemical Engineers. The Doh Wonsuk Memorial Award has been awarded once a year to 1-2 Korean student(s) studying Chemical Engineering in doctoral programs in the United States since 2004 by the US Chapter of Korean Institute of Chemical Engineering. Hee Jeung is the 4th UT Austin student to win this award since 2004.

Congratulations to Geoff Geise who won one of four student oral presentation awards at International Congress on Membrane and Membrane Processes (ICOM) for his talk on “Positron Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy (PALS) Characterization of Polymeric Membrane Materials for Desalination Applications”. The award, sponsored by European Membrane Society, is selected from a group of over ninety presentations.

Congratulations to Dan Miller who was awarded the graduate level First Prize in the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) 2012 North American College Student Technical Writing Competition sponsored by the Polymer Modifiers and Additives (PMAD) Division. The PMAD Challenge is a technical writing competition involving the critical review of one of three selected journal articles and the development of a research proposal based upon the review of the selected paper. Submissions are reviewed and judged by a team of university professors and plastics industry technical professionals. Prizes are awarded to both undergraduate and graduate student winners of the competition who demonstrate excellence in technical writing and scientific creativity. As the First Prize winner, Dan will be invited to attend the SPE’s annual ANTEC meeting in Orlando, FL on April 2-4, 2012, where he will be recognized at the Awards Ceremony.

Congratulations to those who won student poster prizes at the North American Membrane Society (NAMS) meeting 2011 in Las Vegas:

1. Norman Horn, First Place, Gas Separations
2. Dan Miller, Second Place, Liquid Separations
3. Wei Xie, Second Place, Membrane Materials and Formation