Dr. M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of engineering, has appointed Dr. Victor Ugaz holder of the Charles D. Holland ’53 Professorship in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering. The endowed professorship is effective Oct. 1.
Ugaz is a professor in chemical engineering and is also the director of the undergraduate program in the department. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University, and master’s and bachelor’s degrees from the University of Texas at Austin.
Ugaz’s research focuses on harnessing the unique characteristics of transport and flow at the microscale to enable new chemical and biochemical analysis technologies.
His specific areas of interest include learning how to control transport of charged biomolecules (DNA, proteins) in micro- and nano-scale surroundings to achieve faster and more efficient separations; harnessing microscale convective flow fields to execute thermally driven biochemical reactions such as polymerase chain reaction in a faster and more efficient manner; designing novel geometries to mix chemical species in microchannels by exploiting secondary flow phenomena; developing new techniques that help understand how to manipulate and tailor the bulk properties of hydrogels by controlling their nanoporous morphology; and constructing 3D vascular networks for biomedical applications using novel manufacturing methods.