Sabbaticals

The Center supports and fosters international collaborations. Visiting scientists who have participated in sabbaticals at CAER include:

• Dr. Irena Jordanova Kostova, from the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" (Bulgaria), will be on sabbatical at the CAER for five months (September 2007 - January 2008) as a visiting scientist in the Coal Petrology Laboratory. She is here as a Fulbright Scholar, the first geologist from Bulgaria, and has a Ph.D. in Mineralogy and Geology, from the Institute of Applied Mineralogy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
• Dr. Jacek Jagiello is a visiting scientist at the CAER (April-December 2007). He has spent most of his professional life working on adsorption phenomena and studying adsorption properties of non-porous and porous materials - with special interest in understanding and characterization of activated carbons. He received his Doctorate in Chemistry at M. Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland in 1984. He worked at CNRS, Syracuse University and at Westvaco Corporation. His last position was at Quantachrome. Dr. Jagiello has authored and co-authored more than 80 scientific publications including two book chapters, more than 20 presentations at international conferences and four U.S. patents.
• Dr. Rui Xiao, a visiting scientist from China, will be doing research at the CAER for one year (March 2007-March 2008). He is a professor at the South East University in China, where he is a chemical engineer. He will be working in the Power Generation and Utility Fuels Group.
• Dr. Mark Meier, University of Kentucky Professor of Chemistry, will be a visiting scientist at the lab for one year (July 2006-July 2007). Mark has worked closely with our Carbon Materials Group for several years and this on-site sabbatical provides a greater opportunity to collaborate on a daily basis. His main research interests are in the chemistry of fullerenes and carbon nanotubes. He has been a member of the university's faculty since 1990. Previous to that, Mark received a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon, which was followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin.
• Dr. Linda Jewell, was at the CAER for six months (July-November, 2006). She was here on a Carnegie "Time-off" Grant. The purpose of this sabbatical was to take previous research on adsorption and kinetics further that she started in 2004 with Associate Director, Burt Davis. She was first here from July 1996 to August 1997 and again for about 10 weeks in 2004. In South Africa she is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
• Dr. Arumugam Pandurangan, an Assistant Professor in Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry at the Anna University in India, was with the CAER as a one-year visiting scientist (Spring 2006 - Spring 2007). His area of research was nanotechnology and catalysis. While at CAER, he worked with Dr. Mark Crocker on environmental catalysis projects and nanotube research.
• Dr. Ignacio Martin-Gullon
  Worked in the Carbon Materials Group during four months of the summer (June 2005). Dr. Martin-Gullon was part of the CAER staff from 1996-1997, when he was a postdoctoral researcher. His home university is at Spain's Universidad de Alicante, where he is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

• Dr. Isabel Suarez-Ruiz
  Dr. Isabel Suarez-Ruiz, a petrologist, worked with Jim Hower for four months (June 2005). Her home research center is at Spain's National Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), an organization with over 100 fields of research. Her research is in the area of energy, and is similar to CAER's.

• Dr. Linda Jewell
  Linda Jewell, who previously worked at the CAER in the 1990's, was on sabbatical from Wits for three months at the CAER (Summer 2004) while she worked on the Selective Hydrogenation of Acetylene. She recently became a Senior Lecturer in the School of Process and Materials Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa. There she is involved in contract research and income generation, which included setting up and running training programs for industry which ranged from the flocculation of paint waste water to reactor design and scale-up.

• Dr. Ajay Dalai
  Dr. Ajay Dalai was a visiting scientist from 2003-2004. He has returned to the University of Saskatchewan, where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. While here, he worked in the Clean Fuels and Chemicals Group. Dr. Dalai received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Saskatchewan in 1990.

• Dr. Mark Dry
  Dr. Dry of the University of Capetown, South Africa and formerly of SASOL has had three sabbaticals at CAER (most recently in 2003). Each time he worked within the Clean Fuels and Chemicals Group.

• Dr. David Devillers
  Dr. David Devillers from Sasol Technology http://www.sasol.com/ in South Africa joined the Catalysis Group, in Fall 2003, for three months to study kinetic isotopes.

• Dr. Matthys Janse van Vuuren
  Dr. Matthys Janse van Vuuren, Sasol Technology http://www.sasol.com/ (Sasolburg, South Africa) was at the CAER for three months in 2003, working on Fischer-Tropsch Catalysis.

• Mr. Hans Slaghuis
  Mr. Slaghuis is Coal Products Research Manager, Sasol Technology http://www.sasol.com/ (Sasolburg, South Africa). He was a visiting researcher in the Carbon Materials Group from August 26th - Sept 6th, 2002. The purpose of the visit was to learn about CAER's research capabilities, and to begin developing research topics for future collaborations.

• Dr. Michael McCarthy
  Dr. McCarthy was at the CAER for three weeks during June, 2002 as a visiting scientist from the University of Dundee http://www.dundee.ac.uk/ Concrete Technology Unit within the Dept. of Civil Engineering. His expertise in concrete was a significant asset for the ECT Group.

• Dr. Robert Bradley and Dr. Brian McEnaney
  The CAER hosted two distinguished researchers from the United Kingdom in 2002. Bob Bradley (Robert Gordon University http://www.rgu.ac.uk/, Aberdeen, Scotland) and Brian McEnaney University of Bath http://www.bath.ac.uk/, Bath, England) assisted CAER with strategy planning in the area of carbon materials.

• Mr. Tsevi Minster
  Mr. Minster joined the CAER as a Visiting Scientist for four months in 2000. Minster was from the Geological Survey of Israel in Jerusalem, Israel. This was his second time as a visiting scientist at the CAER.