UNH Professor Aims To Increase U.S.-China Research Collaborations
NSF-Supported Effort Could Produce Chemical Engineering Advances

By Bob Emro, CEPS

A University of New Hampshire professor is working to increase research collaborations between the U.S. and China that might someday lead to chemical engineering advances such as cleaner air, improved hydrogen fuel cells and new drug delivery systems.

Virendra K. Mathur recently returned from the First China-USA Workshop on Chemical Engineering, held Aug. 9-12 at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He organized the event, with support from the National Science Foundation, to increase research collaborations between chemical engineering faculty in the two countries. If things go as planned, the second workshop will be held next year at UNH.

“This workshop marks a new page in the context of professional exchange and cooperation in the field of chemical engineering,” said Mathur. “This was a big thing in my life, I can tell you that.”

About a dozen researchers from universities throughout the United States traveled to the workshop where they met with a similar number of researchers drawn from universities across China. “This joint workshop provides a platform for information exchange and faculty collaboration that may have a major impact on the critical issues facing the world today,” said Mathur. “We covered recent advances in the areas of energy, materials, biotechnology, and pollution control and remediation.”

Mathur first had the idea for a small workshop dedicated to increasing collaboration across borders after attending an international scientific conference in China in 2000. While he said that he has been able to foster some long-term international research relationships during his 30-year career, they are very rare. “Usually, you go to these big, international conferences, meet people working in your area and then you never see them again,” he said.

The NSF liked his idea and granted him funding in 2003. Mathur found a partner in Zheng Liu, chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Tsinghua, “the MIT of China.” But then “suddenly SARS came,” said Mathur. “The whole thing got shelved.”

After a trip to China last January, Mathur was able to get the workshop jumpstarted again. “We had a very nice and extremely productive workshop,” he said.