Karen K. Gleason, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will deliver the 2013 Tis Lahiri Memorial Seminar at Vanderbilt University. The seminar is sponsored by the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and will be held Monday, April 15, at 3:10 p.m. in Stevenson Center 5326.
In Gleason’s presentation – Chemically Vapor Deposited Polymer: A New Paradigm for Surface Modification and Device Fabrication – she will discuss “a powerful technology (chemical vapor deposition) for engineering surfaces, which is the method of choice for growing high quality inorganic layers.”
To date, the oxidative CVD (oCVD) method has been applied to the synthesis of organic conducting and semiconducting polymers, and have been integrated into photovoltaic cells and biosensors fabricated directly on flexible fiber-based substrates, including ordinary paper. The characteristics of initiated CVD (iCVD) polymers have been exploited for wettability, sensing, microelectronics and protein adsorption control applications.
Gleason has served as executive officer of MIT’s chemical engineering department; associate director for the Institute of Soldier Nanotechnologies; and as associate dean of Engineering for Research. She is the author of more than 250 publications. Her awards include the ID TechEx Printed Electronics Europe Best Materials Award, the American Institute of Chemical Engineering Process Development Research Award, the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, and the ONR Young Investigators Program Award.
Gleason co-founded GVD Corporation (gvdcorp.com), which has successfully scaled-up and commercialized technology invented in her MIT lab. GVD is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., and has manufacturing facilities in Greenville, SC.
The Tis (Soumen) Lahiri Memorial Foundation was established by friends and the parents of Soumen Atis Lahiri, who was a graduate student in the department of chemical engineering from 1987-89, and who died in 1989.
The aim of the foundation is to provide incentives to young students by recognizing and appreciating their devotion and academic accomplishments. One of the activities of the foundation is to sponsor the annual Tis Lahiri Memorial Graduate Student Thesis Research Seminar and a luncheon for the department’s students, staff and faculty to honor the memory of Lahiri.