Ford to be in engineering symposium

By: Chelsea Sledge

Posted: 8/4/04

David Ford, associate professor, holder of the Kenneth R. Hall Professorship in Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M and recipient of the P.E.C.A.S.E.

(President's Early Career Award for Science and Engineering) award, has been selected to attend the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 10th annual Frontiers of Engineering Symposium on Sept. 9-11, 2004, along with 85 of the brightest young engineers in the nation.

"It's an honor to be chosen and a recognition which I'm grateful for," Ford said. "I'm really hoping to bring back some motivating examples that I could use in the classroom."

The three-day symposium will be held in Irvine, California. Chosen out of more than 170 applicants, the 86 engineers come from varying backgrounds including government, industry and academia. They are pioneers in their field, performing cutting-edge engineering research and technical work, and are between ages 30 and 45. The engineers will meet together at the symposium to explore topics in multiscale modeling, designer materials, engineering for extreme environments and engineering for entertainment.

"Today's engineers and their work are very diverse," said William A. Wulf, president of NAE. "At the same time, many of our most significant recent advances involve contributions from more than one field. (The symposium) exposes engineers to ideas outside of their specialties to spark new insights and collaborations."

Ford studies the adsorption and transport of microporous materials. This knowledge helps create optimal adsorbent materials for separation and reaction processes in the chemical industry. Primarily, he builds models of systems on a small scale. Based on how the molecules interact, he makes predictions about how material will behave on a visible scale, Ford said.

"In lay terms, he is modeling physical phenomena and chemical processes at the most basic level," said Dr. M. Sam Mannan, director of Mary Kay O'Conner Process Safety Center. "To be able to look at how things behave and understand it at the molecular level is really a frontier of research."

Ford's work is noteworthy because he combines scientific work, research and theory to develop research tools that will advance the scientific enterprise, Ford said.

Ford is also the third chemical engineer to receive the prestigious P.E.C.A.S.E. award in 2000 after receiving the Career Award in that year as well. Only a handful of engineers receive the P.E.C.A.S.E. award from the White House, which is selected by the president's science adviser, Mannan said.

Ford graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1991 with a degree in chemical engineering. He later obtained his master's degree and doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Ford has been at Texas A&M since 1997.

"At the symposium, (Ford) will be able to give the fruits of his research to the people who need it out there," Mannan said. "People of his caliber from all over the nation are coming, and it's a big recognition issue for A&M. Things are happening there, and for A&M to be at that table is a good thing."