OU Engineering

Susan Walden was presented the WEPAN Inclusive Culture and Equity Award at the April 2019 WEPAN Annual Conference in Crystal City, VA. This prestigious recognition celebrates exemplary leadership in implementing programs that promote positive change to the climate and culture for women in engineering fields for serving as a model for others. Walden is the founding director of the Research Institute for STEM Education (RISE) and an associate research professor in the Dean's office of the Gallogly College of Engineering of the University of Oklahoma. She holds a core affiliate appointment in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at OU. Walden is a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education where she serves as chair-designate for the ASEE Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, an ASEE presidential appointment. She assumes the role of chair of that organization-wide committee in June 2019. As the director of the Research Institute for ST

NORMAN—A University of Oklahoma assistant professor, Bin Wang, is the recipient of a five-year, $750,869 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science as part of the DOE Early Career Research Program. DOE selected Wang, an early career researcher in the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, Gallogly College of Engineering, for the award on computational modeling of complex chemical systems to understand the basic science behind and enable chemical and energy transformation with high efficiency and selectivity. In the chemical industry, controlling selectivity of a chemical conversion process is important because the presence of multiple products may complicate the separation process leading to intensive energy cost. Dissipation of energy drives chemical transformation in a catalysis process, such as refinery and ammonia synthesis. In most cases, however, it is challenging to control the flow of thermal energy into a specific location, such as a pa