PhD Defence - Albert Emili Cervera Padrell

# The 27 Jan 2012 by Eva Mikkelsen

On Wednesday 1 February PhD student Albert Emili Cervera Padrell will defend his PhD thesis titled: "Moving from batch towards continuous organic-chemical pharmaceutical production" in room S09, Building 101, DTU, at 13:00.

The members of his examination committee are: Prof. Anker Degn, DTU Chemical Engineering, Director Process R&D Dr. Win Aelterman, Janssen Pharmaceutical NV, Belgium, and Ass. Prof. Ryan Hartman, University of Alabama, USA.

Albert’s main supervisor is Asc. Prof. Krist V. Gernaey, DTU Chemical Engineering, and his co-supervisors are Prof. Rafiqul Gani, DTU Chemical Engineering, Asc. Prof. Søren Kiil, DTU Chemical Engineering, and Head of Department Tommy Skovby, H. Lundbeck A/S.

CAPEC Internal Annual Meeting 2011

# The 3 Jan 2012 by Deenesh Babi

On the 2nd of December 2011, the CAPEC annual internal meeting was held at the Technical University of Denmark’s (DTU) Campus in Lyngby. The day consisted of various talks from faculty, post-doctoral researchers and PhD students and a team building session. The purpose of the day was for the current and new persons at CAPEC, to have the opportunity to give talks about their projects or other relevant topics, but in a fun and interesting way.

The day started with a presentation entitled ‘Lies about Science’ given by post-doctoral researcher Dr. Sascha Sansonetti. This was an interesting, funny and thought provoking presentation which engulfed everyone. The following presentation was given by Associate Professor Jens Abildskov about the development of thermodynamics. This was also an interesting and revealing presentation, which showed how thermodynamics became one of the main pillars of theory associated with chemical engineering.

Next the two new PhD students, Deenesh K. Babi and Michele Mattei presented their PhD projects in a rather interesting format. Their presentations were entitled ‘Process Intensification is like dancing Salsa’ and ‘Product Design applied to making Pasta’ respectively. Their presentations were funny but amply explained the purpose of their PhD work.

The next presentation was given by post-doctoral researcher Dr. Oscar Andres Prado Rubio whose presentation was entitled ‘Colombia to CAPEC.’ The presentation was engaging and interesting in comparing the two cultures from Colombia and Denmark and ended with the showing of a video performance from Oscar to the group since he plays the guitar.

After lunch the internal questionnaire survey was presented by post-doctoral researcher Dr. Miguel Mauricio Iglesias and PhD student Alberto Quaglia and it was concluded that thus far all the members of CAPEC are satisfied to be working at the research center.

The final presentation was given by the head of CAPEC, Professor Rafiqul Gani, who presented what it is to be a ‘CAPEC-er’ and the future plans for CAPEC until 2015. What it is to be a CAPEC-er? This can be explained as follows:
1. A PhD-student who dreams of doing experiments (but prefers working with computers?)
2. A post-doc who dreams of great complex problems (but when they awake, work on complex problems!)
3. Anybody else (whose main vocabulary includes: CAPEC; systematic methods; computer-aided; ICAS; MG-groups; CAMD; …)


The internal meeting ended with a team building game, where those present were divided into groups and only using newspaper, scissors and tape, the tallest tower had to be built. This was fun and exciting and everyone enjoyed the session. Then everyone headed back to CAPEC to prepare the Christmas decorations for the research center. With this everyone had Glogg, a Danish Christmas drink made from wine and afterwards played a famous Danish Christmas game. The day ended with the Christmas Dinner event at Hard Rock Café in Copenhagen where everyone had the traditional Danish Christmas food and dessert. Everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing dinner. Please see the pictures below for highlight of the day’s event.

Professor Ed Cussler's CAPEC Seminar

# The 21 Dec 2011 by Deenesh Babi

On 14th of November 2011, Professor Ed Cussler from the Department of Chemical Engineering and materials Science, University of Minnesota (MN), visited CAPEC and gave a lecture entitled ‘Distributed manufacture of Ammonia’. The talk constituted of a current R&D project currently being carried out at Prof. Cussler’s research group which involves the manufacture of Ammnonia on-site at farmer’s farms in the state of MN. The talk was interesting and was followed by an interesting discussion afterwards. Below see highlights of the presentation.