Faculty

Prof Wickramasinghe obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Melbourne, Australia in Chemical Engineering.  He obtained his PhD from the University of Minnesota, also in Chemical Engineering.  He worked for 5 years in the biotechnology/biomedical industry in the Boston area before joining the faculty of Chemical Engineering at Colorado State University.  He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Arkansas in 2011 where he holds the Ross E Martin Chair in Emerging Technologies and leads the Membrane, Science, Engineering and Technology Center (MAST).  Prof Wickramasinghe has published over 100 peer reviewed journal articles, several book chapters and is co-editor of a book on responsive membrane and materials.  He is active in AIChE and was the Meeting Program Chair of the 2014 Annual Meeting in San Francisco.  He has also served on the Board of Directors of the North American Membrane Society.

Prof Wickramasinghe’s research interests are in membrane science and technology. His research focuses on synthetic membrane-based separation processes for purification of pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals, treatment and reuse of water and for the production of biofuels.  Typical unit operations include:  microfiltration, ultrafiltration, virus filtration, nanofiltration, membrane extraction etc.  A current research focus is surface modification of membranes in order to impart unique surface properties.  His group is actively developing responsive membranes.  These membranes change their physical properties in response to changed environmental conditions. A second research focus is the development of catalytic membranes for biomass hydrolysis by grafting catalytic groups to the membrane surface.

Xianghong Qian is a full professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering.  Prior to joining UAF, she was a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University. She has a BS degree in Chemistry from Nanjing University, China and a Ph.D. in Physical/Theoretical Chemistry from George Washington University, USA.  She did her postdoctoral research in Condensed Matter Theory at the Max-Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics, Germany. She also has experiences in industry and at a national laboratory before joining academia.

Dr. Qian’s major research interests focus on investigating the fundamental processes involved in carbohydrate chemistry, smart polymers for drug delivery and protein purifications, virus clearance, protein folding and misfolding using complementary experimental and theoretical and computational tools.  Ab initio and classical molecular dynamics simulation methods combined with static quantum mechanical calculations are used to elucidate the many underlying chemical and biochemical processes at the molecular level. She is the recipient of 2009 NSF CAREER award and has over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapter publications.