SD Mines to Feature Stanford, NASA, Princeton Scientists Speaking on Energy, Sustainability, Biomedical Engineering

News provided by

South Dakota School of Mines & Technology

Feb 23, 2016, 19:20 ET


RAPID CITY, S.D. (PRWEB) February 23, 2016 -- The South Dakota School of Mines & Technology Chemical and Biological Engineering speaker series kicked off today with Stacey Bent, Ph.D., of Stanford University, who spoke on nanoscale materials for sustainable energy. Other speakers from Pacific Northwest Laboratory, NASA and Princeton will speak on topics ranging from biomedical engineering to biofuels.

Bent’s presentation, given today, focused on creating nanoscale materials for solar cells and water splitting to produce hydrogen for fuel. “With the intensifying global need for alternative energy, there is strong interest in developing new materials for sustainable energy devices. Underlying a diverse set of energy conversion devices are similar physical and chemical phenomena, many of which can be controlled with nanoscale materials,” she said.

Bent is the chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Jagdeep and Roshni Singh Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. She also serves as director of the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy and is a senior fellow in the Precourt Institute of Energy. After obtaining degrees from University of California, Berkeley and Stanford, she worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories and New York University before joining Stanford.

Bent’s research has been published in over 200 papers, and she has presented nearly 250 talks. An associate editor of Chemistry of Materials, Bent has been recognized with a number of awards for research and teaching, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

The speaker series includes:

• Feb. 23 – Stacey Bent, Sustainable Energy and Nanomaterials, Stanford University
• March 1 – Vinod Amar and Ian Walters, Water Production, SD Mines
• March 15 – Tim Tesslink, Solar Photovoltaics, GenPro Energy Solutions
• March 22 – Doug Elliot, Ph.D., Biofuels and Bioenergy, Pacific Northwestern National Laboratory
• April 8 – Bruce Koel, Ph.D., Catalysis and Materials, Princeton University
• April 12 – Travis Walker, Ph.D., Complex Fluids and Soft Materials, Oregon State University
• April 19 – Kara Spiller, Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering, Drexel University
• April 26 – Meyya Meyyappan, Ph.D., Sensors, NASA

All presentations will be from 11 a.m.-noon in the Classroom Building, room 204 west, on campus, with the exception of Bruce Koel on April 8. Koel will speak at 11 a.m. in the Surbeck Center ballroom.

###

About SD Mines
Founded in 1885, the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology is a science and engineering research university located in Rapid City, S.D., offering bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. The university enrolls 2,843 students with a student-to-faculty ratio of 14:1. The SD School of Mines placement rate is 98 percent, with an average early-career salary for graduates of $62,300, according to the 2015-2016 PayScale report. Find us online at http://www.sdsmt.edu and on Facebook and Twitter.

Dani Mason, South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, http://www.sdsmt.edu, +1 (605) 394-2554, [email protected]