I am a full-time faculty member of Auburn’s Chemical Engineering Department. I have an equal mix of industrial and academic experience; my industrial experiences were in the pulp & paper industries. My research interests continue to be pulp & paper related. I also have an interest in the topic of engineering education: I have helped to revamp curriculums at the institutions I have been associated with and am deeply involved in teaching the use of practical methodologies to our students. I really enjoy the teaching aspects of my job and am active in assisting various Outreach efforts such as A.U.'s TIGERs camps and the BEST robotics competitions.

Food Experiments in the Unit Operations Lab - co-authors were M. Biswas, L. Kelley & D. Mills - This presentation looked at the various experiments dealing with food that have lately been a part of the CHEN 3820 course. I started off by talking about the efforts of the Fall '06 class in which 3 groups proposed novel experiments dealing with food. After slide 21 of the presentation I then rapidly (very rapidly!) went through this presentation. The 2nd presentation is what Group Foxtrot (Spring '07) had proposed as a food experiment. After going through the 15 slides of their presentation I then returned to slide 22 of the 1st slide show. On slide 22 I made my obligatory pun when I talked about 'My Expectations': I said that with the butter experiment I expect more background, chemistry type material in the reports because the students don't churn out very much data. Get it? Get it? Anyway, I spent the remainder of the presentation discussing how the Summer '07 and Fall '07 groups had implemented the butter experiment.

Explosive Decompression in the Unit Operations Lab - sounds scary but this was about our Mentos & Diet Coke experiment.

When Things Go Wrong - sounds even scarier! This presentation looked at 4 cases in which things did not go as planned during the junior level lab courses at Tuskegee and Auburn. My co-authors were J. Krishnagopalan & D. Mills.

Getting To Know You... (You & Your Calculator) - the typical engineering calculator of today costs about $100 and is more powerful than the personal computers that were on the scene when I was an undergrad; in this talk I explained some of the usually untapped features of the calculators used by engineering students

Go On A Tiger Hunt At one time (2000 or 2001) the city of Auburn tried to emulate cities that have a bunch of animal sculptures of a single theme; you know, like the cows that roam urban pastures. Anyway, despite Auburn's reputation as a cow college, it was decided to build tiger sculptures and make them available for various groups to customize them as they pleased. Some interesting and other not-so-interesting designs resulted and the statues were all placed in the Toomer's Corner area. All well and good until various tigers were stolen, vandalized, you get the picture. I think that there was one house of students that was caught with 5 tigers in their possession. Anyway, the powers that be decided that it would be a good idea to relocate the tigers to more secure pastures. So, if you see a tiger statue now it's likely to be in a location that's a) not easily accessible (like the roof of the high school) or b) somewhat guarded (like outside the city fire department). If you ever pay a visit to Auburn keep your eyes open and see how many of these tigers can you find?

A Paratrooper's Faith Images of and the text from the classic "little book" given out to our nation's paratroopers

2008 Halloween Every year our student chapter of AIChE hosts a Halloween party; I went as Anton Chigurh. The Diet Coke bottle is an inside joke referencing our Lab I experiment.

2009 Halloween Well, this year AIChE co-hosted a Halloween Masquerade Benefit. I bought tickets but had to cancel out at the last minute. If I had gone I'm quite sure I would've won the Best Costume Award with my stunning version of a Hanson brother from the movie Slap Shot. Oh well... The picture is from our tailgate before the Ole Miss game (which actually fell on October 31st).

Football Stadia Here's a map that shows the football stadiums I've seen college games in.

Reason 192 to become an engineer - 'cause the terminology is easy to understand

Cause and Effect Some of the things I teach have to do with situation analysis, modelling, design of experiments and optimization. So I think it's important that our graduates realize that just because this is true does not mean that this will do anything useful. Thanks to our friends at TheAuburner.com. Update: hmmm, maybe Coach Chizik is on to something...

More Cause and Effect Here's a couple of pictures showing what happens if you take one of my lecture courses.

And Finally Here's proof that chemical engineers can do just about anything. Just remember, with great power comes great responsibility.