KU chemical engineering graduates win national honors

LAWRENCE -- Two University of Kansas chemical engineering graduates have added to their program's ongoing string of successes at the national level.

Richard Pass, who graduated in May with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, took first place in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers annual student design contest. His classmate, Sean Murphy, now a graduate student in chemical engineering at KU, took third-place honors.

KU students have won more honors in the AIChE design competition than students from any other school in the nation during the past 20 years.

Both Pass and Murphy expressed surprise at their achievement.

"My first reaction was disbelief," said Pass, who now attends dental school at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. "I found out from a friend who rang me.¹ I had trouble sleeping that night I was so excited."

Murphy pondered the difficult odds of being among the top three in the nation.

"I was pretty surprised," Murphy said. "It just seems like there's not a very good chance because there are so many people in the competition."

Colin "Chip" Howat, associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, who teaches the chemical engineering design sequence, incorporates the competition into one of his senior-level classes. Howat attributes this unparalleled success to the high-caliber students who come to KU.

"We have good students and we have a good foundation to make this design program work," Howat said. "I think these students would excel in whatever they chose. I think KU students are the best in the country."

The competition takes a problem from industry and has students develop a solution. This year's challenge was to design a treatment process for a radioactive wastewater stream to recycle nitric acid.

Each student devotes, on average, 130 hours during the 30-day competition window, Howat said. Pass, who grew up near Birmingham, England, and Murphy, originally from Denver, each turned in documents several hundred pages long.

"It makes for a pretty good paperweight," Pass said of his nearly 500-page submission.

Each participating university can submit solutions from only two students.

"If I could have submitted one more, we would have had another award," Howat said.

"I think it (the achievement) indicates that our students have a fantastic foundation to practice in any field of chemical engineering," Howat said.

Both students said they found the exercise to be a rewarding experience.

"I am the kind of person who likes to see things through from start to finish in the design process," Pass said. "I gained the confidence of knowing that I could do it by myself."

For their efforts, both Pass and Murphy will receive a cash award. Pass also will have an opportunity to present his solution at the AIChE annual student conference Nov. 15-17 in San Francisco.