2024 News Archive

Prof. Geise gave a seminar at the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at Columbia University on Engineering ion transport in polymer membranes for water purification and energy applications. Thank you to Prof. Oscar Nordness for the invitation!

Charlie Leroux used his skills on the grill to cook breakfast for the UVA ChE Grad Board tailgate in advance of the Boston College vs. UVA homecoming football game.

Congratulations to Sean Bannon on winning the UVA Department of Chemical Engineering summer seminar series oral presentation competiton. Sean presented his research titled Understanding the influence of sodium chloride concentration on ion diffusion in charged polymers in July. Sean also was recently awarded the UVA Engineering Carlos and Esther Farrar Fellowship. Congratulations Sean!

Prof. Geise was invited to participate in and present at the Polymers & Membranes for Clean Energy & Resource Recovery workshop at NREL in Golden, CO. He presented during and participated as a panelist in the Discovery & Co-Design session of the workshop, which aimed to bring together leading experts from industry, academia, federal agencies and national labs to discuss gaps and needs for translational membrane research for clean energy and resource recovery.

Charlie Leroux and Caroline Morin won a NSF I-Corps travel grant to participate in a hybrid I-Corps Course associated with The Battery Show, held in Detroit in early October.

Sean Bannon (pictured) and Geise Research Group alumni, Ethan Kutner and Ben Garretson, recently published a study titled Understanding the influence of sodium chloride concentration on ion diffusion in charged polymers in the Journal of Membrane Science.

Amin Tia Saasi and Caroline Morin published research along with colleagues in Prof. Gary Koenig's lab. Their study, titled Selective lithium extraction from brine via chemical reduction of iron phosphate with aqueous iron compounds, recently appeared in Sustainable Energy & Fuels.

Geise Research Group undergraduate researchers (D'Cunha, Preble, and Bitew(pictured)) presented their research at the Summer ChE Undergraduate Research Poster Session.

Amelia Preble presented her research titled Evaluating single ion transport in SPM-GDMA ion exchange membranes for lithium recovery at the UVA Office of Citizen Scholar Development's Pizza and Posters event.

Congratulations to Anna Harris, Bea Tremblay, and Ben Garretson on graduating from UVA this spring! Bea will continue her studies in chemical engineering as a Ph.D. student at the University of California Santa Barbara. Anna and Ben will take positions at Aquatech and The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. Congratulations!

Undergraduate researcher Anna Harris won the Class of 2024 UVA Engineering Outstanding Student Award, which recognizes fourth year undergraduate students who have excelled in the areas of academics, leadership, and service. Anna, a member of the team for three years and the second Geise Research Group undergraduate researcher to win the award, will be missed next year as she begins her career in pharmaceutical research and development.

Graduate research assistant Sean Bannon has published Application of the Born Model to Describe Salt Partitioning in Hydrated Polymers in ACS Macro Letters. This paper reports an application of the Born model where polymer structural factors resolve discrepancies between calculated and measured salt sorption properties.

Congratulations to Bea Tremblay, Geise Research Group undergraduate researcher, on winning a NSF GRFP award! Bea will take her NSF fellowship to UC Santa Barbara in Fall 2024 to continue her studies as a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Graduate student Charlie Leroux won a VSGC Graduate Research Fellowship to conduct research on Polymer Separators for High Temperature Lithium Sulfur Batteries.

Graduate research assistant Charlie Leroux (co-advised by Prof. Gary Koenig) has published Transport properties of ethylene glycol functionalized membranes exposed to nonaqueous electrolytes in Polymer along with Geise Research Group co-authors Dr. Patrick McCormack and Shruti Elango.

Congratulations to undergraduate Amelia Preble who was selected to receive a UVA Engineering Dean's Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship to continue her research on Evaluating mixed electrolyte performance of ion exchange membranes for lithium recovery!

Geise Research Group students organized and presented at the
2024 UVA Chemical Engineering Research Symposium (CHEERS).

Congratulations to Geise Research Group graduate students Sean Bannon (left) for his first prize poster award and honorable mention oral presentation and Caroline Morin for organizing an excellent and successful event!

Prof. Geise has been appointed as an editor of the Journal of Membrane Science Letters!

Congratulations to undergraduate Natasha D'Cunha who was selected to receive a UVA Harrison Award to continue her research on Describing thermodynamic interactions between salt and water in hydrated polymers to guide engineering strategies for desalination membranes!

Undergraduate researcher Anna Harris and graduate research assistant Sean Bannon, shown here, joined other UVA Chemical Engineering students in an outreach event with students from a local Charlottesville school.

Prof. Geise presented the group's research during a University of Florida Department of Chemical Engineering seminar titled Engineering ion transport in polymer membranes for water purification and energy applications. Thank you to Prof. Janani Sampath for the invitation!

Graduate research assistant Sean Bannon's paper Influence of Donnan and dielectric exclusion on ion sorption in sulfonated polysulfones was selected as a JMS Editors' Choice article!