Department welcomes three professors
>>Print ViewPublication Date: 11/16/2009
sponsored by
Purdue’s School of Engineering is welcoming three new professors to its faculty lineup this semester.
Yue Wu, Raj Chakrabarti and Chongli Yuan have all accepted positions as assistant professors in the department of chemical engineering. Although their specific areas of research differ, their decisions to study and work at distinguished universities coincide.
Wu received his doctorate at Harvard University, the same university where Chakrabarti received his bachelor’s degree. Both succeeded at Harvard as well as at the other institutions they attended.
Arvind Varma, head of the department of chemical engineering, said Yuan, like the other two professors, was chosen due to the excellence she demonstrated at previous universities.
“She really excelled in top places in the world,” Varma said. “She has been at the top in the top places.”
One of the top places Varma refers to is ETH Zurich – the university where Albert Einstein studied – which Varma considers to be the No. 1 technical institution in all of Europe.
Yuan was also part of a research group that discovered a new DNA property, while at the same time disproving a once agreed-upon feature of DNA.
“The thing that I’m most proud of: I worked on a project that worked on the mechanical properties of DNA,” Yuan said. “We found something completely new.”
The new finding was that DNA is not a completely rigid structure – a striking discovery.
Like Yuan, Chakrabarti and Wu conduct extensive research and have great promise, Varma said.
“All are very talented,” he said. “They bring great energy and enthusiasm.”