Courtney Wilmoth is a senior from Los Angeles, California majoring in chemical engineering and minoring in English. She is the present Presidential Scholar for the Faculty of Engineering and just lately offered analysis on the American Institute of Chemical Engineers 2024 Annual Scholar Convention in San Diego, the place her analysis presentation was named the third greatest in her class. Courtney’s undertaking, a membrane filtration system, was bought by the corporate who funded the analysis — an enormous accomplishment! We requested some questions on her analysis and the way her interdisciplinary focus has benefited her years on the U of A and past.
It’s not usually {that a} chemical engineer pupil decides to minor in a humanities program – how did that occur, and the way has your English minor supported your engineering work?
Initially, my plan was to go to legislation faculty, so I used to be already planning to be an English prelaw main after I first utilized to the College of Arkansas. However after I got here to campus for a tour the scholar who confirmed me round was within the meals science division, so she confirmed me her lab and talked about all of the enjoyable issues that she was designing and creating, and the way she was educating rural Arkansas about totally different rising practices. My eyes simply lit up. I advised myself, “I can do something for one semester,” however I really fell in love with the science.
I’m studying the background data that I have to be profitable and educated about local weather change and sustainability and secure operation practices, however in my English lessons I’m gaining the communication abilities to articulate these ideas to most people in a approach that’s simply comprehensible. Though numbers appear black and white, nothing impacts folks in a black and white method.
I’ve taken technical {and professional} writing lessons, however in one in every of my literature survey lessons we talked concerning the variations in political views between the North and the South, and the way budding know-how impacted the discourse of the time. Then, in one other survey class on fashionable and post-modern literature, we had an extended dialogue on the atomic bomb and the Chilly Battle. We learn a few of my favourite authors who’re additionally physicists, and we talked concerning the purposes of science on the actual world. I might advocate that class to any engineer, really. We additionally talked about local weather change and methods to enchantment to individuals who don’t have the academic background to know all of the science behind it.
What’s a lesson you’ve realized that has caught with you?
Certainly one of my favourite professors focuses on Ok-12 and STEM training. She recommended that I ought to learn one in every of theoretical physicist Richard Feynman’s essays referred to as, “The Worth of Science,” which requested how do you clarify to somebody that shifting ahead is vital and that the place the science stops, the politicians and the on a regular basis employees have to select up the slack? Feynman mentioned that that switch of knowledge is the toughest half about being a scientist.
Did that assist you to as you considered what profession paths to pursue?
I skilled the problem of informing folks in a really political skilled setting at my internship final summer season because the environmental specialist for clear air and automobile consulting at Phillips 66. My job was to guarantee folks within the oil and fuel business that transitioning to electrical automobiles after the passage of recent laws in California was economically and environmentally viable. One of many predominant sources of knowledge that I needed to pull from was my internship with Toyota the earlier summer season. What Toyota discovered was hybrid autos and hydrogen gasoline cell had been cradle-to-grave the best choice. However so many individuals don’t have the technical experience to learn these extremely scientific guidelines and laws. I unknowingly 
selected a extremely politicized analysis subject, however I’ve already accepted a job provide to guide the manufacturing and manufacturing high quality group at Toyota Motors North America the place I’ll be engaged on materials high quality of EV batteries.
What’s a profit you’d share with different college students who’re contemplating looking for out interdisciplinary alternatives on the U of A?
My interdisciplinary method allowed me to check overseas twice. I went to the faculty-led medieval England journey the place I used to be in a position to study concerning the doc preservation processes on the British Museum, and I additionally went on the sustainability and the European meals system journey. These two journeys had very totally different areas of focus, however I used to be in a position to join them to my training targets, and each of them in the end supported my concepts for analysis.
Due to my English minor and my communication abilities, I’ve been requested to tackle loads of management positions inside the Faculty of Engineering. For instance, I used to be the VP of requirements of my sorority, Phi Sigma Rho, a job that features primarily bylaw overview and adjustments. As an engineering sorority, there won’t be loads of members with the communications abilities I’ve. Finally, the nationwide program requested me to overview and edit our nationwide bylaws as effectively.
I used to be additionally the convention chair for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. It was a 300-person convention on campus right here on the College of Arkansas, and one of many predominant causes they selected me is as a result of I used to be in a position to talk effectively in writing, so I used to be in a position to write clear directions for registration and convention occasions.
You might have accomplished one thing not many college students do whereas in class – you offered your analysis undertaking to an organization, proper? Inform me about your undertaking.
My analysis is in sensible purposes of membrane science. My graduate pupil mentor is a Ph.D. candidate now, so he’s been engaged on this analysis for upwards of 5 years, creating these membranes. As a result of my ardour is making a bridge from science to the folks, my job has been to search out real-world purposes for the membranes we’re creating, and I realized that after we use these membranes in a specific approach, they may very well be used to deal with a well being problem that affects Arkansans.
Throughout the nation, 43 million People’ solely accessible water is effectively water, which isn’t regulated by the EPA and oftentimes not filtered adequately to be secure for ingesting. As a result of Arkansas is an agricultural hub, lots of the water contaminants present in our wells are nitrates and phosphates, which aren’t eliminated by typical filtration strategies. Our membranes are a typical polyethersulfone (PES) much like what you discover in your Brita water filter, however my mentor added functionalization to the membrane to provide it extra filtration capabilities.
Our analysis aim was to search out strategies of filtration that can be utilized even when there isn’t a electrical energy or operating water, to learn individuals who get their water from wells in addition to communities which have confronted a pure catastrophe. Our product works in that utility. I traveled to Batesville and offered our analysis to the corporate that had been funding the undertaking, particularly centered on transportable purposes of the know-how, and so they determined that not solely had been they going to proceed funding our analysis, however they had been going to look into manufacturing the sensible parts.
