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Society of Plastics Engineers — Student Chapter

The UH Student Chapter of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) provides a forum for graduate students to interact with scientists and engineers from the local polymers industry. We invite professionals for a bimonthly seminar series so students can gain perspective about the challenges, opportunities, and career paths in industrial polymers research. Thanks to the support of the local SPE chapter, our students can attend the annual SPE Polyolefins conference at no cost. Furthermore, we offer several fellowships to recognize student research accomplishments and leadership in our SPE chapter. More information about SPE is available at www.4spe.org.

Currently, we have more than 20 student members from the Colleges of Engineering and Natural Sciences and Mathematics. If you are a graduate or undergraduate student at UH and you would like to join our organization, then please contact spe.uhchapter (at) gmail.com or one of our officers listed below:

2023 - 2024 Officers:

Siddhartha Paul


Ph.D. Candidate in Civil Engineering
spaul5 (at) cougarnet.uh.edu
President

Yunuen Avila Martinez

Ph.D. Candidate in Chemistry
yavilama (at) cougarnet.uh.edu
Vice President

Md Sifat Tanveer

Ph.D. Candidate in Chemical Engineering
mtanveer (at) cougarnet.uh.edu
Treasurer

Faculty Advisor:

Dr. Megan Robertson

Dr. Megan Robertson
Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Office Location: S224B, Engineering Building 1
Email: mlrobertson (at) uh.edu

 

Recent & Upcoming Events

Seminars

Seminars are in the large Mechanical Engineering conference room, unless otherwise noted.

  • Texas Soft Matter Meeting (co-organized by SPE UH Chapter) - August 18, 2023
  • Dr. Leanna Foster (DuPont) - February 22, 2022 (virtual)
  • Dr. Gregory K. Hall (ExxonMobil) - April 9, 2021 (virtual)
  • Dr. Emily Pentzer (Texas A&M University) - November 5, 2020 (virtual)
  • Dr. Susannah Scott (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) - November 7, 2019
  • Dr. Amit Katiyar (Dow Chemical) - April 5, 2019
  • Dr. Maksim E. Shivokhin (ExxonMobil) - February 20, 2019
  • Dr. Narayan Ramesh (Dow Chemical) - November 15, 2018
  • Dr. Tanguy Terlier (Rice University) - October 16, 2018
  • William Heller, Brad Lokitz (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) - September 20, 2018
  • David Hansen (Kraton Polymers) - May 15, 2018
  • Wes Hobson (Dow Chemical) - May 3, 2018
  • Vittoria Balsamo (Nalco Champions) - November 14, 2017
  • John Erne (Netzch Instruments) - October 24, 2017
  • Dr. Vivek Sharma (University of Illinois at Chicago) - August 30, 2017
  • Baker Hughes Facility Tour - April 6, 2017
  • Dr. Jingwen Zhang (ExxonMobil) - March 21, 2017
  • Rafael Verduzco (Rice University) - February 14, 2017 (2-3 pm)
  • Dr. Wayne Furlan (Baker Hughes) - December 6, 2016
  • Peter. Lauzo (Peal Processing Inc) - April 28, 2016
  • David Truong (University of Houston) - March 10, 2016
  • Adeline Mah (University of Houston) - March 10, 2016
  • Wenyue Ding (University of Houston) - March 10, 2016
  • Dr. Matthew Dixon (Biolin Scientific) - December 10, 2015
  • Guozhen Yang (University of Houston) - Nov 17, 2015
  • Dr. Alexander Norman (Exxon) - Oct. 2, 2014
  • Jason Clark (Total) - Sept. 18, 2014
  • Dr. Pal Arjunan (Director, Trelleborg Chemicals) - April 24, 2014
  • Dr. Michael Smith (Momentive Chemicals) - March 27, 2014
  • Dr. Corina Sandu (Baker Hughes) - Jan. 2014
  • Dr. Rajen Patel (Dow Chemicals) - Dec. 2013
  • Prof. Rafael Tadmor (Lamar University) - Nov. 2013
  • Blackwell Plastics Plant Tour - Oct. 2013
  • Arnab Chakraborty (Process Systems Enterprise) - Oct. 2013
  • Ginusha Perera (University of Houston) - Nov. 2012
  • Prof. Lou Madsen (Virginia Tech) - Nov. 2012
  • Suchanun Moungthai (University of Houston ) - June 2012
  • Dr. David Hansen (SBC Polymers Consulting) - May 2012
  • Dr. Tirtha Chatterjee (The Dow Chemical Company) - Apr. 2012
  • Dr. Dana Breed (The Dow Chemical Company) - Nov. 2011
  • Dr. Manu Rego (Dow Elastomers) - Sept. 2011
  • Mr. Thomas E. Bell (Managing Director/Owner - S & T Group LLC) - Aug. 2011
  • Dr. Phillip D. Hustad (The Dow Chemical Company) - Apr. 2011
  • Laura B. Weaver (The Dow Chemical Company) - Feb. 2011
  • Dr. Kenneth Anderson (The Dow Chemical Company) - Jul. 2010
  • John L. Hammond, Jr. (Baker Petrolite Polymers) - Jun. 2010
  • Dr. David J. Lohse (ExxonMobil Research & Engineering Co.) - Apr. 2010
  • Dr. Toshio Suzuki (Kuraray America) - Feb. 2010
Workshops
  • Bruker Mass Spectrometry & Advanced Vibrational Spectroscopy Workshop -  September 28, 2022
    • Characterization of Polymers using MALDI & TIMS
    • Fast identification and characterization of polymers by FT-IR spectroscopy
    • Failure analysis and reverse engineering using vibrational spectroscopy
  • Advanced Polymer Characterization - September 18, 2017
    • Fundamentals of GPC, Various Detectors, and Triple Detection GPC
    • GPC Column Selection and Method Development
    • Introduction to Tosoh Bioscience and EcoSEC GPC Systems
  • Experimental Methods Part 2 - July 24, 2014
    • Saeed Ahmadi Vaselabi (Ion Beam Lithography)
    • Indranil Mitra (Scattering Techniques for Soft Materials)
  • Experimental Methods Part 1 - July 10, 2014
    • Abhijit Patil (Electron Beam Lithography)
    • Carmen Pascente (Unit Operations for Microelectronics Patterning)
  • SPE Student Exchange (TAMU) - Feb. 26, 2014
    • Research presentations from TAMU students
  • Student Presentations - Aug. 2013
    • Abhijit Patil, Weiye Zhu, Rahul Pandey, Maria Vorontsova
    • Shu Wang, Umeasiegbu Chinedu, Carmen Pascente
  • SPE Student Exchange (TAMU) - Jan. 2013
    • Research presentations from TAMU SPE officers

 

Recent News

 

Acknowledgements

We thank the Society of Plastics Engineers for the following equipment:

  • Attenuated total reflectance accessory
  • Dip coater