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The Research Environment

The ISU CBE program (both undergraduate and graduate) has been consistently ranked in the top quartile of U.S. ChE programs. The department has long valued and given strong emphasis to its undergraduate program, which is one of the largest in the country, graduating ~90 students per year. Six faculty are recipients of young investigator awards from NSF, ONR, and the Whitaker Foundation. The department’s research expenditures exceeded $5 million in 2004. Since 1998, the department has hired eight new faculty, five of whom are in the biological area. The CBE department is housed in Sweeney Hall, a 44,000+ ft2 building with modern laboratory and office space, including an $8 million addition completed in 1994 to accommodate the department’s growing strengths in biotechnology, surface science, and materials. The biological/materials research facilities in the department include: UV/Raman/IR spectroscopy; atomic force/optical/confocal microscopy; high pressure liquid/gel permeation chromatography; dissolution test stations; fermentation facility; thermal analysis; and a clean room for cell culture. Students will use the department’s excellent computational facilities and the ISU network. Students working on relevant projects will have access to electron microscopy and chemical/biological spectroscopy maintained by the Office of Biotechnology, Ames Lab, Institute of
Combinatorial Discovery, and Plant Sciences Institute.

The ChE department at ITESM has the largest undergraduate program among Mexico’s private universities, currently graduating ~150 B.S. students yearly, with options for industrial engineering and environmental engineering minors. In 2004, a new engineering major on bioprocess engineering was established and it already has attracted ~200 students. The faculty in these programs is based administratively either in the ChE department or in one of the related research centers, mainly Environmental Quality and Biotechnology. In all, 17 faculty serve the three ChE undergraduate academic programs; ten are based in the ChE department, five in the Center for Environmental Quality and two in the Biotechnology Center. Annual research expenditures in these areas exceed $1.5 million, not considering the $20 million that ITESM has invested in the biotechnology area. In the last decade, the ChE laboratories were renovated to accommodate the increasing number of undergraduates and to enhance research activities.

Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Research Facilities

BioMap REU
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Iowa State University
2162 Sweeney Hall
Ames, IA 50011-2230
Email: biomap@iastate.edu
Phone: 515-294-7643