Designing bioreactors to grow plant tissue culture and for micro propagation presents unique engineering challenges. The focus of our work is to understand the response of plant tissue cultures to changes in reactor environment in order to optimize production. This work is a collaborative effort that involves Chemical Engineers, Biologists and Biochemists. Bioseparations Full realization of biotechnology's potential to produce useful products will require the engineering of efficient and, in some cases, large-scale production and recovery processes. Research in the bioseparations laboratory is aimed at understanding and exploiting the thermodynamic and transport properties of biological materials underlying their separation to improve existing purification methods and develop new separation techniques.
Atmospheric aerosols play a major role in the chemical and radiative processes in the atmosphere.
Understanding the formation and growth of new particles in the complex, multicomponent system represented by the atmosphere, is a major challenge. A related issue is the formation of new phases in or on the surface of an existing aerosol, that can influence the chemical reactions occurring there. Experiments and modeling are both used to address these problems. We are interested in using catalysis to solve problems of environmental importance. We are studying new processes that will avoid the production of pollutants and also processes that will recycle undesired products.