Distinguished Su Lectureship

With the establishment of the Su Conference Room and the Su Distinguished Lecture Series, the University of Rochester joins the Su family in honoring Professor Su's long and distinguished career in Chemical Engineering and the spirit with which he pursued it.

The 16th G.J. and S.T. Su Distinguished Lectureship

Sponsored by the University of Rochester Department of Chemical Engineering.

Date:  April 25, 2018

Interfaith Chapel - River View
Lunch Reception: 1p.m. 
Lecture: 2p.m

Professor Carol K. Hall
Camille Dreyfus Distinguished University Professor
North Carolina State University

Carol Hall’s research is driven by her fascination with molecules of interesting architectures and energetics, and by her desire to understand how these molecular features combine to yield complex mesoscopic or macroscopic features. Her primary tools in this effort are statistical thermodynamics, which allows estimation of thermophysical properties from knowledge of intermolecular forces, and computer simulation, which permits the visualization of systems on a molecular level. These techniques are used to model the self assembly of soft materials including polymers, colloids, and surfactants, proteins whose aggregation is implicated in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, and other biomolecules. Hall’s first major area of research is “soft” materials, such as polymers, colloids, and surfactants. A second major area of research is protein aggregation. Protein aggregation is associated with a number of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and the prion diseases. A new area of research is computational protein design.

In honor of Professor Gouq-Jen Su (1908-1996). Professor Su lived a long and productive life, dedicated to the pursuit of ideas and ideals. He was born in 1908 in Fukien, a coastal province in the southern region of China. He attended a Northern Baptist missionary school as a teenager. In 1931, at the age of 23, Professor Su graduated from Tsing Hua University in Peking. In 1934, Gouq-Jen Su was one of the several college graduates selected, through a nation-wide examination, to further his studies at the graduate level, in the United States. That summer, he journeyed to MIT to continue his studies and, in three years, received his D.Sc. degree. During World War II, Dr. Su served for four years as chairman of the Chemical Engineering Department at Tsing Hua University. He helped design and operate an alcohol fermentation plant and a sugar refinery in Kunming. The alcohol produced was mixed with gasoline and was utilized as liquid fuel for U.S. Army motor vehicles traveling on the Burma Road, some forty years ahead of gasohol. Professor Su joined our faculty at the University of Rochester in 1947 and retired in 1974, though continuing as Emeritus for the remainder of his life. Over his active fifty-year career, Professor Su supervised 33 master's students and 15 doctoral students. Among his numerous publications, his outstanding papers on applied thermodynamics have been widely cited and are considered landmarks in the field. He proposed a modified form of the van der Waals Law of Corresponding States. Every thermodynamics textbook, to this day, contains his generalized equations of state for real gases.

Su Lectureship Speakers