MUSTAFA ERBAKAN

mxe198(at)psu(dot)edu

222 Fenske Lab

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

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Biography: Mustafa completed his PhD in Bioengineering coadvised by Drs. Wayne Curtis and Manish Kumar. He received his BSc and MSc in Chemistry at Cukurova University in Turkey. His previous research areas were in kinetics of antioxidant enzymes and membrane bound guanylate cyclases in visual transduction. After working at Adiyaman University as research assistant in 2007, he won a scholarship from Turkish Republic, Ministry of National Education to attend Penn State and pursue a PhD degree in Protein Production Technologies.  He works on projects related to develop Rhodobacter sphaeroides (R. sphaeroides) as an alternative bacterial platform for functional expression of medically relevant membrane proteins.   He is characterizing a new membrane protein he discovered and developing a fluorescence spectroscopy-based technique for determining the exact number of proteins inserted per unit membrane area.

 

Principal Investigator

Manish Kumar

manish(dot)kumar(at)psu(dot)edu

158 Fenske Lab

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

1-814-865-7519

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Link to recent presentation introducing research

A more general presentation about our motivation for research









Biography

Manish Kumar received his bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology in Trichy, India in 1998. He received his masters degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) in 2000. He then worked as a an engineer with NCS, Inc in Phoenix for a year and a half on arsenic treatment and membrane water treatment projects. He moved to the Applied Research Department of MWH in 2001 and worked there for 5.5 years on various applied research projects including a range of membrane technologies - microfiltration/ultrafiltration, membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis (brackish surface and groundwater, reclaimed water and seawater), and forward osmosis. He returned to UIUC in 2006 to continue his graduate studies. His PhD conducted under the guidance of Dr. Mark Clark and Dr. Julie Zilles resulted in one of the first reports on biomimetic synthetic membranes for desalination.  He then joined the Walz Laboratory at the Harvard Medical School in Boston as a postdoc to look at structure and function of the eye lens Aquaporin, AQP0, in lipids and block copolymers.  He started at Penn State as an Assistant Professor on August 1st, 2011.

Graduate Students

Postdoc

Yuexiao Shen

syxbach(at)gmail(dot)edu

162 Fenske Lab

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

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Biography: Yuexiao Shen received his bachelors degree in Water Supply and Wastewater Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University, China in 2009. Then he got his master degree in Environmental Engineering in the same department in 2011, both under the guidance of Dr. Xia Huang, a pioneer in Membrane Bioreactor(MBR) technology in China. His work in Tsinghua mainly focused on the fouling in MBRs, especially in large-scale MBRs for municipal wastewater treatment. A combination of several years of study and lab work aroused his interest in the wider field of membrane science and technology. Because of his strong passion in the fields of both membrane and environmental science, he came to Penn State to continue his research and joined the Kumar group. His future work will focus on synthesizing and testing promising biomimetic membranes and its environmental applications.



Patrick Saboe

pos5030(at)psu(dot)edu

162 Fenske Lab

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

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Biography: Patrick Saboe graduated with a bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of New Haven in 2011. Previous research includes a summer internship with the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation at the University of Pittsburgh in 2010 where his primary work was to study mirco-algae based bio-fuel production from wastewater treatment processes. Patrick has chosen to research biomimetic membranes due to the implementation of highly selective and efficient separation processes that may result from this research.  He is also working on making devices using photosynthetic protein 2D crystals.  He is currently a EPA STAR Fellow.


HASIN FEROZ

hmf148 (at)psu(dot)edu

162 Fenske Lab

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

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Biography: Hasin Maksura Feroz graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), 2012. Following graduation in 2012, she taught as a lecturer at the Chemical Engineering Department, BUET. She joined the Kumar lab in fall 2012 and intends to conduct research on light-driven membrane proteins with possible applications in optogenetics, environmental cleanup and fuel/energy generation.


BEN SCHANTZ

abs254(at)psu(dot)edu

122 Fenske Lab

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

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Biography: Ben Schantz received his bachelors degree in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware in 2012.  His research experience includes an REU at the University of Delaware in 2010 in which he studied the effects of anion identity on the conductivity and microstructure of polymer electrolytes, which could improve the safety of lithium ion batteries.  His current research involves creating molecular dynamics simulations of block copolymer bilayers in solution, which he hopes to apply to the design of biomimetic membranes.  He is co-advised by Dr. Kumar and Dr. Janna Maranas.


TINGWEI REN

txr942(at)psu(dot)edu

162 Fenske Lab

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

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Biography: Tingwei Ren received her bachelor’s degree in department of Chemical Engineering at Tsinghua University, China in 2013. Her work in Tsinghua focused on Microfluidic technology and combination between microfluidic technology and electrospining technology. Her future work will involve aquaporins and their transport properties in lipids and block-polymers. She hopes her research will have application in industrial settings.


RAJARSHI GUHA

rajarshisoft(at)gmail(dot)com

170 Fenske Lab

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

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Biography: Rajarshi received his BS in chemical engineering from Jadavpur University, India (2007) and MS in chemical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India (2009). He then worked at a government owned oil & gas company (BPCL) as a research scientist for 3 years. He was pursuing research on novel CO2 conversion catalysts using high throughput reactors. He conducts PhD research on mechanisms and mitigation of colloidal and biological fouling of reverse osmosis/nanofiltration membranes. He hopes to develop catalytically and biologically active surfaces for fouling prevention.

 

Undergraduate Researchers

Research Assistant

KEVIN SHEBEK (Honors, Senior)

STANLEY CHAN (Junior)

JESSICA KASTER (Senior)

JESSICA SLAVEJKOV (Junior)

ZACH JANSMA (Junior)

LUMA TELES (Senior, exchange student from Brazil)

TEVIN MOORE (Senior)

ALDEN ANDERSON (Sophomore)

RASIDHA REHMAN (Freshman)

DANIEL TSAI (Sophomore)


BOYA XIONG

bzx100(at)psu(dot)edu

162 Fenske Lab

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA 16802

Biography: (coming soon)