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Industrial Mentors The research at the Institute for Environmental Catalysis is all about how chemicals can be neutralized at the source or in the environment. Not surprisingly, industry collaboration is key. To facilitate the process, the Industrial Mentor Program has given industrial chemists out in the field a role as research advisers to graduate students and faculty members that benefits everyone. Unlike some programs that require industry to fund research, the IEC's program only asks for intellectual participation. "Although ours is basic research," says Peter Stair, the IEC's director, "mentors have a chance for input, and the results have relevance for their real-world problems." Since the program started in 1998, researchers from Dow Chemical Co., Allied Signal Inc., Engelhard Corp., Union Carbide Corp. and UOP LLC have come on board. Paula Bogdan (G83, 87) and Robert Bowman (G76, 79), both holders of doctoral degrees in chemistry, are industrial mentors. UOP's Bogdan says that a connection with Northwestern will help both her company and the graduate student she is mentoring. "Where academic institutions add a tremendous amount of value is that they start out on a highly research-oriented level," she says. "A new tool, eventually used in industry, starts out in a university lab, perhaps in a dark subbasement, where a grad student spends hours tinkering with it." Bogdan offers atomic force microscopes, widely used in industry today after being developed in universities 10 years ago, as an excellent example. UOP is headquartered in Des Plaines, Ill. No matter. Once a week, Bogdan will peruse her student's research results via an electronic notebook, an Internet-based "collaboratory" that makes communication as easy as working with someone down the hall. Developed at Richland, Wash.-based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, one of two labs affiliated with the IEC, the electronic notebook is a tool to enhance communication between researchers working at distant sites. Northwestern is the first place outside of PNNL to use it. Twice a year, Bogdan will visit the campus to meet with faculty and students in person. She hopes to provide some of the career perspective she felt was missing from her own education. "When I came through, I thought I should be a professor becasue that's what everyone else wanted to be," Bogdan says. "You don't get to see the other possibilities." An industrial chemist, Bowman has done catalysis research since arriving at Dow in 1979, and he's recruited four other Dow researchers as industrial mentors for his alma mater. A former student of Robert L. Burwell Jr., professor emeritus of chemistry, Bowman has periodically plugged back into Northwestern over the years on various projects. This time, he says, "I got drawn back to Northwestern because of [chemical engineering professor] Harold Kung's work on environmental catalysis." Bowman is interested in Kung's approach to creating chemicals used in the production of polyurethane, a widely used floor finish. "The routes Kung is studying would be more environmentally friendly than current methods of production." -- M.M. |
