Crystal engineering leader to give ChemE's Kelly Lectures

Michael F. Doherty, a renowned researcher in process systems engineering emphasizing crystal engineering, will present the Kelly Lectures in the School of Chemical Engineering on April 16-17.

Doherty, professor of chemical engineering and department chair at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was named in 2008 as one of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers' "One Hundred Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era." He will speak as follows:

* April 16 (Tu): "Rapid Process Design: Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff." 9-10:15 a.m. Forney Hall, Room G140 (preceded by reception at 8:30 a.m. in Henson Atrium).

About the topic: Methods developed in the last two decades for rapid process development using process synthesis techniques now have a proven track record of generating better processes with lower carbon footprints and lower manufacturing costs. The talk will offer a brief nontechnical survey of new design methods and a brief history of their origin. It also will present two applications: (1) assessing the viability of some biofuels options and investments; (2) new strategies for carbon capture and utilization via carbonate mineralization.

* April 17 (W): "Crystals Are Like People: Growth and Defects Are What Make Them Interesting." 11:30 a.m. Forney Hall, Room G140.

About the topic: For predicting and controlling the size and shape of crystalline particles, multidimensional population balances have been developed, but they suffer from needing the absolute growth rate for every family of faces that may appear on the crystal surface. That information is sparse, but one answer to the dilemma of bleak data prospects is "from first principles." This lecture will show how to reformulate multidimensional population balances in terms of relative growth rates and how to create first principles mechanistic models to calculate these quantities for real molecular crystals as a function of supersaturation.

Doherty received his B.Sc. in chemical engineering from Imperial College, University of London in 1973, and his PhD in chemical engineering from Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 1977. He is the holder of four patents, has published more than 200 technical papers and has given more than 250 invited lectures. He has received numerous honors and awards for his teaching and research, including the Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Chemical Engineering Research (2004) from the AIChE and the E.V. Murphree Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry (2012) from the American Chemical Society.