Featured MSU Engaged Scholars
- Laura Bix, Ph.D.
- Associate Professor
- School of Packaging
- College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Medical Packaging Design Requires Comprehensive Approach
Most of us have experienced the frustration of trying to open a package that is well sealed and well insulated. If a healthcare professional trying to open a package containing a medical device experiences that same frustration, it can mean a difference in quality of care, or even life or death for a patient.
Laura Bix, associate professor in MSU's School of Packaging, works with a wide range of practitioners, students, and medical professionals to identify the critical issues involved in healthcare packaging.
Cost considerations, ease of opening and handling, maximizing sterility and minimizing contamination, and preventing user error are some of the many factors Bix takes into account when working with industry partners ...
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- Tonghun Lee, Ph.D.
- Director, Laser Diagnostics Laboratory for Advanced Energy and Propulsion Research
- Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
- College of Engineering
Working with the Air Force to Develop Supersonic Engines
The United States Air Force has a "need for speed." Dr. Tonghun Lee, associate professor in MSU's College of Engineering, is working with researchers at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in Dayton, Ohio, to develop innovative combustion systems that will allow engines to operate at incredibly high speeds.
Lee has spent three summers at Wright Patterson's Propulsion Directorate within the Aerospace Propulsion Division (Air Force Research Laboratory), funded by their Summer Faculty Fellowship Program. "I use lasers to look at the combustion process in propulsion systems," Lee explains. "I image things like temperature and chemical species in laboratory set-ups which are designed to simulate conditions that show how an engine is running." Because much of his research is on location at WPAFB, Lee travels there frequently to set up lasers and make measurements ...
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MSU Priorities
Community and Economic Development in the 21st Century
Chemistry Professor's Research Leads to Award Winning InPore Technologies
InPore Technologies is an award-winning, Michigan based, startup company created from the science discoveries of a chemistry professor at Michigan State University.
Dr. Thomas J. Pinnavaia joined MSU's Chemistry Department in 1966, and continues to have considerable enthusiasm for the challenges of chemical research with inorganic materials. He is the lead inventor on more than 80 issued and pending U.S. patents, has served as a member of the editorial boards of nine international scientific journals, and has won several national and international awards.
The current company is the evolution of a company called Claytec, Inc., that represented Pinnavaia's earlier work with inorganic materials.
InPore Technologies produces a product for applications in the plastics industry called Silapore™. The Silapore particles produced have numerous pores comparable in size to polymer molecules, and the way they are structured work synergistically with other chemical agents to improve flame retardancy while making the compounds stronger and/or lighter, and therefore less expensive for manufacturers to produce in a variety of industry capabilities ...
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