A successful engineer must have technical knowledge and skills, but also the creativity, teamwork and communications skills necessary to put technical plans into practice. I promote creativity by helping students form linkages across traditional topical boundaries, and by frequently incorporating non-quantitative, open-ended elements into assignments. I emphasize the problem-solving process over the solution, and insist all work begins with fundamental principles. I have included creative group work even in large-enrollment core engineering courses. For undergraduate and graduate students alike, I aim to instill an appreciation for research and invention as a creative force by including contextual information on how research goes from bench, pilot plant, or field into science and engineering practice. In years to come, I want the students to think of themselves as co-creators, not just consumers, of knowledge. I also insist engineers can write and present their ideas well, and I look towards greater inclusion of my students’ science and engineering perspectives in our social discourse. My teaching specialties include: Fluid mechanics, chemical engineering transport phenomena, microfluidics and BioMEMS, environmental microbiology, and environmental engineering. I have also taught Capstone Design and Senior lab courses in my department.

The over-arching theme of my research is to apply fundamental chemical engineering tools to better understand the impacts of micro-scale habitat conditions on the activity microorganisms. My purpose for undertaking this research is to contribute to solutions to the most important challenges of our time, including energy sustainability and security, environmental quality, and human health. I do this through both my research program and through the education activities described above. One of my greatest strengths is my broad background and my ability to communicate and to identify opportunities across diverse fields. I thrive in interdisciplinary collaboration. My own PhD students are from both Chemical Engineering and Environmental Engineering. Interdisciplinary collaboration with Marine Sciences has helped secure NSF funding for my “traps” project, “Field-Deployed Microfluidic Trap Array for Discovery and Observation of Microbial Eukaryotes.” Likewise collaboration between Chemical Engineering and MCB has led to the success of our multi-million NSF EFRI project on the micro-environment in termites, and two USDA projects. The breadth of my work allows me to pursue funding from diverse agencies including DOD, DOE, EPA, NIH, NSF, USDA. My goal for the 2012-3 is to develop and submit new competitive proposals to NIH and to CBET at NSF on the biofilm work, as well as to establish industrial collaborations or support (e.g. SBIR) to further diversify funding for my lab. Moving forward, my goal is maintain external funding for a steady state population of about 4 PhD students, 1 postdoctoral fellow, and 4 Honors students. Each of the graduate students would have leadership of a separate project using our fundamental tools and approach to better understand the interaction of microorganisms and their micro-scale habitat, and each student would advise at least one undergraduate researcher. After they leave my lab, my goal is for my students to be able to examine the fundamental physical and chemical aspects of microhabitat, and how they influences the interactions of microorganisms. Students should be able to identify unanswered questions in the research, design well-controlled experiments to test specific hypotheses, and communicate their results to both a technical and lay audience.