The Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department has a total of 18 faculty members. The research expertise of the faculty covers a range of areas of chemical and petroleum engineering including a number of non-traditional areas which have emerged in recent years. Five of the faculty (Green, Liang Ostermann, Vossoughi,and Willhite) have expertise in enhanced oil recovery techniques and reservoir engineering research. There are strong groups in electrochemical engineering (Nguyen and Weatherley), and in catalysis and reaction engineering (Subramaniam, Williams, Scurto, Weatherley). Through the Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis we also have expertise in supercritical fluid processing and ionic liquids (Subramaniam, Scurto, and Weatherley), in advanced computational techniques (Camarda), process design and thermodynamics (Howat), electronic materials (Nordheden), biomedical engineering (Berkland, Detamore, Gehrke, Laurence and Southard). Eight of the eighteen (Green, Howat, Nguyen, Nordheden, Ostermann, Southard, Weatherley, and Willhite) have industrial experience prior to joining academia some with full professional engineering accreditation (Howat and Weatherley).
The faculty 's commitment to both research and teaching has resulted in several honors and awards. Three (Green, Howat, Locke) of the faculty members are Fellows of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and two (Green, Willhite) are Distinguished Members of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Individual faculty members have been recognized for their professional achievements through awards from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (Green, Willhite) the American Society of Engineering Education (Subramaniam) and the National Research Council (Davis). One (Weatherley) is Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, London. There are thirteen endowed professorships in the School of Engineering, and three are held by members of this department (Green, Willhite, Subramaniam). Two of the Sharp teaching professorships that have been awarded in the School of Engineering in the last six years have been held by our department members (Howat, Subramaniam). Several of our faculty have received School and/or University-wide teaching awards (Green, Howat, Nordheden, Southard, Subramaniam), research awards (Nguyen, Subramaniam) and service awards (Green, Ostermann and Southard).
Our faculty members have written undergraduate and graduate textbooks. One of our faculty (Willhite) wrote a textbook on Waterflooding, and two of our faculty (Green, Willhite) wrote a textbook on Enhanced Oil Recovery published by the SPE. One of our faculty members (Green) is the senior editor of Perry's Chemical Engineers Handbook. Another faculty member (Weatherley) is Editor of the Chemical Engineering Journal. Other professional activities of our faculty include journal editorial board memberships, memberships on national committees, and consulting, and chairs of international conferences.
