Abhaya Datye, director, Center for Micro-Engineered Materials, is leading an international team of researchers and students studying large-scale chemical catalysis of biomass materials into fuels, chemicals and materials. This is the first year of a $2.5 million, five-year Partnership for International Research and Education Grant (PIRE) funded by the National Science Foundation to foster new international research partnerships and provide international education opportunities for students. UNM is the lead institution for the grant, which includes the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, University of Virginia, Technical University of Denmark, the Fritz Haber Institute and the Institute for Colloids and Surfaces of the Max Planck Society in Germany, and Haldor Topsoe A/S, Denmark, a large Danish catalyst company. Two projects will focus on hydroxymethylfurfal (HMF), a compound formed during the selective catalytic conversion of sugars. A third project is conversion of biomass into materials, providing an opportunity to reverse negative environmental effects of burning fossil fuels.
Professor in the Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering in the School of Engineering, Datye has been at UNM for more than 22 years during which he has had a major impact on both the graduate and undergraduate programs in chemical engineering. He has run the Center for Micro-Engineered Materials for 23 years and turned it into an NSF/industry supported hub for nano-materials research. He is also a key player in creating and managing the statewide NSF EPSCoR program in nano-materials.
UNM Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Abhaya Datye has received the National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center award for 2008. "Dr. Datye's leadership has resulted in a number of critical research initiatives that have improved the department's visibility and facilitated the hiring of talented junior faculty," said Julia Fulghum, chair of the Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering. "He has led the development of the new Nanoscience and Microsystems program, which has an impact not just on UNM, but on the state."
Elise Switzer, a graduate student, and Abhaya Datye, Distinguished UNM professor, attended a professional workshop on Heterogeneous Catalysis and Surface Chemistry conducted at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics is Dalian. Catalysis is so pervasive in modern day chemistry that it is estimated that 60 percent of today's chemical products and 90 percent of current chemical processes are based on catalytic chemical synthesis. Switzer, who received a scholarship to attend the workshop, presented her research on "Nanostructured Catalysts for Direct Methanol Fuel Cells." Datye gave an invited lecture on the "Dynamics and Mobility of Nanoparticles in Heterogeneous Catalysts." The workshop also included presentations from American and Chinese scientists representing both public and private institutional research.
The director of UNM's new graduate degree program for nanoscience and microsystems Abhaya Datye has worked with the staff at the Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC) to assemble a supercomputer capable of teraflop calculations. Grants from the National Science Foundation's Integrative Graduate Educations and Research Traineeship (IGERT) and the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) along with money from the Chemistry and Biocomputing Departments at UNM made it possible to acquire this computer. "This new computer will make it possible for students to play with nanoscale structures even before they synthesize them in the lab," Datye says. "It has already made a big difference to graduate students taking 'Density Functional Theory,' a physics course being taught by Professor Susan Atlas on the computational modeling of nanomaterials. Students used the supercomputer to perform the calculations for individual research projects this spring."