Chemical Engineering
Inaugural Dennis C. Prieve Lecture
October 08, 2024
4:00 p.m. ET
Carnegie Museum of Art Lecture Hall, 4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Join the Chemical Engineering Department for the Inaugural Dennis C. Prieve Lecture on October 8 at 4:00 p.m. at the Carnegie Museum of Art Lecture Hall. The Dennis C. Prieve Lecture Series was created to honor the memory of Dennis Prieve, Gulf Professor of Chemical Engineering Emeritus.
This lecture will feature John Y. Walz (’92), President, Milwaukee School of Engineering.
Lecture Title: Enough is Enough and Too Much is Just Right - The Many Things I Learned from Dennis Prieve
Summary: Throughout his career, Dennis Prieve made significant contributions to a variety of topics in colloidal science, including diffusiophoresis, electrokinetics, colloidal stability, and interparticle forces. Perhaps his most significant contribution, however, was the development of the technique of Total Internal Reflection Microscopy (TIRM), which has the ability to detect interaction energies resulting from femtonewton-level forces acting on a single colloidal particle with nanometer-level spatial resolution. In this talk I will review the fundamentals behind TIRM and show some examples of its application to measuring both interaction energies and near-contact particle dynamic properties. I will also highlight some of the lessons I learned as a graduate student working with Dennis that have helped me throughout my career. Finally, I will close by talking a bit about the current challenges facing higher education institutions, specifically small private institutions, and how my own institution has responded to those challenges.