05/17/05

Education:

 Experience:

     Manager of Process Engineering Labs/ Instructor,  Auburn University, May 1998-present.   Faculty appointment, responsible for design, procurement, building and testing laboratory and pilot scale process equipment and instrumentation.   Teach Unit Operations Laboratory Courses.  Engineering College Safety Liaison.

  Faculty Research Associate, Washington State University, Jan. 1995- May 1998.  Provided technical, instrumentation and computer support for multi-disciplinary research group investigating bioreduction of selenium.  Developed analytical methods for speciating and measuring trace levels of selenium.  Operated,  maintain and repaired Inductively Coupled Argon Plasma spectrometer and Ion Chromatograph.  Designed, constructed and programmed pH control/data acquisition system for bioreactors.

²     Unit Operations Engineer, Washington State University, Jan. 1996-May 1998.  Responsible for modernizing chemical engineering unit operations laboratory including design, equipment selection, construction and testing of new units such as packed bed absorber, wetted-wall tower and apparatus for the study of gas-phase diffusion.  Wrote and implemented computerized data acquisition programs in Visual Basic, LabTech Notebook, and LabView.  Instructed students in theory and operation of experiments.

²     Researcher/Teaching Assistant: Washington State University, Aug 1994.-Dec. 1995.  Conducted biochemical engineering research.  Designed and operated a plant cell bioreator that continuously stabilized and separated protein products from solution.  Invented a new method for measuring plant cell concentrations.  Led group and individual tutoring sessions in undergraduate Chemical Engineering Process Principles and Transport Phenomena classes.

     GRADUATE RESEARCHER/ TEACHING ASSISTANT: UC-Davis, March- July 1994.  Developed multimedia instructional materials for teaching chemical engineering.  Supervised Unit Operations course.

²     Refinery  Engineer, TOSCO Refining Co., Avon, CA., May-Sept. 1993. Conducted study to identify sources of nickel in refinery waste water, revised environmental training manuals for plant operators, designed and programmed system for environmental reporting and databasing.

²     Field Service Technician,  Rio Linda Chemical Co., Sacramento, CA., June-Aug. 1992. Monitored and repaired chlorine dioxide generator systems in food processing plants, sampled and analyzed treated water.

²     Electrical Construction,  Various Contractors, 1981-1985. 

University Service: 

Selected Publications: 

E. James, D.R. Mills, and J.M. Lee, “Increased Foreign Protein Production and Recovery from Plant Cells Cultured in an Affinity Chromatography Bioreactor ”, Biochemical Engineering Journal 12 (2002) 205-213

D.R. Mills and J.M Lee,  “A simple, accurate method for determining wet and dry weight concentrations of plant cell suspension cultures using microcentrifuge tubes”, Plant Cell Reports (1996) 15:634-636

 M.A. Rege, D.R. Mills, Y. Sun, James Petersen, D.R. Yonge, D.L. Johnstone and W.A. Apel, “ Estimation of Parameters in a Column Packed with Bio-SepÔ Beads”, Biotech. Tech., 1998

Outside interests/activities: 

Triathlon and bicycle racing: