A series of free educational seminars featuring Vanderbilt faculty will be available to parents and Commencement visitors from 1:30 to 3:45 p.m. on Senior Day, Thursday, May 12.
Faculty seminars prove to be popular with the parents and guests of graduates during Vanderbilt University’s annual Commencement Week activities, which run May 11-13 with the main Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 13.
G. Kane Jennings, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, will offer an hour-long seminar – “Solar Energy Conversion Inspired by Nature’s Engineering” – in Wilson Hall 103 at 2:45 p.m.
Professor Jennings joined Vanderbilt University as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering in 1998 and was promoted to associate professor in 2005. He has published over 55 papers in the area of organic thin films and interfacial science/engineering. Professor Jennings, his Ph.D. student Juan Tuberquia, and his B.E. student Nabijan Nizamidin were honored with the 2010 Arthur K. Doolittle Award for the best research paper given at the ACS Spring Meeting in the Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering Division from over 500 eligible papers. Professor Jennings received a 2006 Chancellor’s Research Award for an article published in J. Am. Chem. Soc. on pH-responsive polymer films. He received the Ellen-Gregg Ingalls Award in 2005, a Vanderbilt University-wide award for excellence in classroom teaching, after winning the teaching award from the Vanderbilt School of Engineering in 2002.
Professor Jennings has mentored two Ph.D. students who each won the Best Research Paper within the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering in 2004 and 2008. He has mentored eight undergraduate students who have either won or placed in the Undergraduate Poster Sessions at the Annual Meetings of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and he has mentored four undergraduate students and one graduate student who won NSF Graduate Fellowships.