Event
ChBE Seminar Series: Ken Yasuda
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Room 2110, Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Bldg.
Professor Ray Adomaitis
adomaiti@umd.edu
SPECIAL EXTRA EVENT:
3:30pm-4:30pm
Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering conference room 2113 Chemical/Nuclear Engineering Building
ChBE main office
Dr. Yasuda will hold a Q&A about careers with the DOD. Students of all levels are encouraged to attend!
Government RDT&EA Non-Traditional Career Track for Chemical Engineering Graduate Students
Dr. Ken Yasuda
Ft. Belvoir
U.S. Army
The technical skills developed during a graduate education are hard-won. When entering the job market, great consideration must be exercised when leveraging the time invested studying. Graduate students entering the workforce today are readily cognizant of how their technical backgrounds overlap with job functions typical to industry and academia. There is less familiarity, however, with how graduate-level skill sets can be meaningfully interfaced with careers that diverge from more traditional research tracks. Government research, especially at the applied level, is one such alternative career track.
This talk will serve as a general introduction into government career tracks, with descriptions of one particular pathway which bridges R&D (Research and Development) with T&E (Testing and Evaluation) at the US Army's RDECOM CERDEC Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate. Specific technical details will not be discussed. However, examples of some of the challenges currently being faced will be used to illustrate how a firm grounding in engineering principles can be brought to bear in an applied research environment; one very much removed from the original context in which the principles were introduced.
About the Speaker
Dr. Yasuda received his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his MS in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University. His MS research in chemical reaction engineering focused on optimizing multiphase chemical reactions via theoretical modeling of tailored drop size distributions. With a preference for more applied work, he performed his doctoral studies at the Ludwigs-Maximilians Universitaet in Munich, Germany. There he developed a background in materials chemistry and leveraged his chemical engineering skills to develop sensors and high-throughput reactors to screen zeolite-based nanocomposite materials designed to serve as electronic nose elements in gas sniffing applications. Dr. Yasuda repatriated to the US to accept an NRC postdoctoral fellowship at the US Army's Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate in Fort Belvoir VA, where he subsequently accepted a full-time staff position in the area of countermine technologies. The applied nature of his endeavors makes publication in traditional scientific journals impractical, although he continues to stay active in research. Dr. Yasuda has active interest in mentoring students, having led two masters students while in Germany, and several undergraduates and postdocs while at NVESD. He is an active member of the Materials Research Society, the American Chemical Society, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
