Associate Professor Sheryl H. Ehrman
About Dr. Ehrman Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles 1997
Visit Dr. Ehrman's personal page » Current Research Dr. Ehrman has developed a research program focusing on formation, characterization, and processing of dry particles (aerosols). The P2OWDER Group studies particles and particle-based materials, developing processes to make materials with tailored properties. The group partners or has partnered with others, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Army Research Laboratory, to test the performance of some of these materials. Applications include catalysts for energy conversion, nanoscale size standards, solar cells and biomedical imaging.
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Q&A with Dr. Ehrman What impact could your work have on society or consumers? For nanotechnology to find wider application, we need to have a better understanding of how to make materials with specific properties. Trial and error approaches require too much luck! It's also important to consider processes for making materials that may be cleaner and more economical. End applications of the materials and processes we have developed include nanometer scale standard materials, low cost solar cells, and catalysts for fuel cells. What attracted you to the Clark School? I was attracted to the Clark School because of the quality and character of the students, both graduate and undergraduate, and because of the opportunities for collaboration with other creative and energetic faculty members. Why is the Clark School a good place for students (graduate or undergraduate) to study chemical and biomolecular engineering? Our department is a great size. We're large enough to offer a good variety of electives in different ChBE areas, yet we're small enough so that most of the professors will know you by name once you graduate. Also, most faculty have opportunities for undergraduate students in their labs, so if you want to try research, this is easy to arrange. At the graduate level, we have a nice mix of students who all get along very well. Because of the other laboratories in the area, there are many opportunities for collaborative projects, and access to specialized facilities is great. Why should young engineers consider chemical and biomolecular engineering for their field of study? There are so many opportunities available to them once they graduate. Our students have gone on to traditional chemical engineering positions with oil and chemical companies but they have also found great positions with pharmaceutical, biotech and advanced materials companies. Typically one or two every year go on to medical school, and students even go on to law school. I chose chemical engineering as an undergraduate major because I loved chemistry and mathematics, and this was a major that combined both. Plus, it seemed that there was strong demand for people with this kind of education since the starting salaries for B.S. chemical engineers are usually higher than starting salaries for any other 4-year degree. Please tell us about your experiences with programs aimed at recruiting or retaining young women in engineering. We owe a lot to the women who have gone down this path before. Thanks to their efforts, the playing field is not as obviously uneven as it was in the past. The ticket to recruiting women—and anyone else for that matter—into chemical engineering, is to make sure students are aware at the K-12 level about engineering as a career option. There's no exciting show on TV featuring engineers (like ER for doctors or Law and Order for lawyers for example) so we have to find other ways to get the word out. I participate actively with the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center's outreach work, and I visit a high school in my neighborhood about 4 times a year for Career Day and for portfolio reviews. When I was a high school student, some members of the Society of Women Engineers came to visit our school, and this helped to confirm that engineering was an interesting career option. |
Before joining our faculty, Dr. Ehrman was a Guest Scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Gaithersburg, MD) and an NSF International Research Fellow at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland. In 2001 she received the NSF CAREER award. Dr. Ehrman leads the Pursuing Particulate Opportunities with Dedicated Engineering Research Group (P2OWDER). Dr. Ehrman was recently awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for the 2006-2007 academic year to study aerosol approaches for drug delivery at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, India.
