OU Engineering

Congratulations to the 2016 Gallogly College Pursuit of Excellence Award recipients! These awards were first given in 2015 to honor those who have regularly and unselfishly served our college with excellence in all they do and in motivating others. This year's recipients include Dane Schoelen (undergraduate student), Needa Virani (graduate student), Dr. Ed O'Rear (faculty) and Kristi Boren (staff). Dr. Ed O'Rear was selected for his outstanding and pioneering research in surfactant science and biomedical engineering, his award-winning excellence in teaching and research, his many years of passionate service as director of the OU Bioengineering Center and his dedicated service to both the college and the university at large, including the arts. Needa Virani was selected for her efforts as an outstanding graduate student, which she demonstrates both in the classroom and lab, as she pursues a doctorate degree in biomedical engineering with a research focus in canc...

It is the great pleasure and honor of the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering to announce that Dr. Daniel Resasco was named the Inaugural Gallogly Chair of the Gallogly College of Engineering this September, pending Regents’ approval in October. Resasco has served as a member of the CBME faculty since August of 1993 and currently holds the titles of the Douglas and Hilda Bourne Chair and the George Lynn Cross Professor of Engineering. His list of achievements include but are not limited to more than 40 patents (the greatest number in the GCoE), more than 250 publications and an average of nearly $1 million per year in research funding for the past five years. He has served on the executive committee for the International Congress on Catalysis and as the associate editor of the Journal of Catalysis since 2001. He worked as the senior scientist at Sun Company, Inc., and is the founder of SouthWest Nanotechnologies, Inc. Resasco is the winner of numerous award...

The School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering welcomed its newest member, Keisha Walters, to the faculty starting this fall. The South Carolina native, the first of her family to graduate from college, grew up near Greenville and graduated with her B.S. degree from Clemson University. For a few years, she worked in industry as a chemist in the area of polymer additives alongside other chemists and chemical engineers in research and development labs and pilot plants before deciding to return to Clemson to complete her graduate degree. Walters originally intended to study for her master's degree, but discovered she had “a passion for creative, open-ended research and innovation.” She chose instead to get her doctorate in chemical engineering because “it was interesting, combined my interest in chemistry and polymer materials, was challenging, and would allow me to work in a large number of different fields.” She intended to return to industry once completing her Ph.D...

Late this summer, the Southwest Chemical Association named Bree Cooper the awardee of the Nicholas Chopey Scholarship at its annual Scholarship Luncheon in Houston.   The CBME Junior was the recipient of $4,000 for her essay explaining where she thinks she could make the greatest impact in the engineering industry and why her contributions would be important to the industry itself. Cooper describes herself as being, “from one of those small towns where you know everyone…it has a population of about 1,600 and I graduated with about 50 other kids.”   Her interest in STEM was ironically encouraged by a lack of upper-level math and science courses in her high school.   Feeling that she was missing out on a bigger understanding of the world, she chose to attend the Oklahoma School of Science and Math’s satellite campus her Senior year of High School in order to take the more challenging classes.    “It was an intense learning curve for me” she admits, jump...

View video  of induction acceptance speech. The Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame (OHEHF) was established in 1994 to recognize and honor individuals, living and deceased, for outstanding meritorious service to higher education in Oklahoma. This year represents the 23rd year to honor higher education educators and administrators as well as those who support higher education with distinguished contributions. OHEHF recently announced the class of 2016 for induction into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame. Dr. Shivakumar Raman of the school of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) will be inducted this year in a ceremony on October 24, 2016 to be held at the Cowboy Hall of Fame.  Shivakumar Raman, Ph.D. , has taught more than 3,000 undergraduate students and mentored more than 60 graduate students on their theses since joining the OU School of Industrial and Systems Engineering in 1988. He has garnered more than $10 million in funded research and published...

Norman, Okla.— A staggering 1.7 million persons in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer in 2016, with 600,000 cases ending in death.   University of Oklahoma researchers have collaborated to design a novel , non-invasive cancer therapy that could eliminate tumors without affecting the healthy cells in the body. The cancer therapy targets specific cancer cells using single-walled carbon nanotubes that bind directly to the tumor, then are heated with near-infrared light.   The OU photothermal therapy is most effective against shallow or surface tumors in breast, bladder, esophageal and melanoma cancers, without the adverse side effects of chemotherapy, radiation or surgery. The therapy was created by Roger G. Harrison, Jr. and Daniel E. Resasco, professors in the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, Gallogly College of Engineering. Harrison is also affiliated with the Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering.   Harrison’s exper...

By Jana Smith, Director Strategic Communications for R&D Norman, Okla.— A University of Oklahoma-led research team has conducted a study on the diversity of microbial communities that demonstrates the effects of human-caused changes in climate, land use and other factors.   In this study, researchers show the diversity of soil bacteria, fungi and nitrogen-fixing bacteria all are better predicted by variation in environmental temperature rather than pH. Jizhong Zhou, director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics and professor in the Department of Microbial and Plant Biology and School of Civil Environmental Sciences, OU Colleges of Arts and Sciences and Gallogly College of Engineering, leads the research project with assistance from the University of Arizona, The Santa Fe Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa and University of New Mexico.   Zhou is an affiliate of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Tsinghua University. The sig...