Jay D. Schieber, Director of the Center for Molecular Study of Condensed Soft Matter and Chemical Engineering Professor at Armour College of Engineering has recently published Molecular Engineering Thermodynamics. The book was co-authored with Juan J. De Pablo.

Building up gradually from first principles, this unique introduction to modern thermodynamics integrates classical, statistical and molecular approaches, and is especially designed to support students studying chemical and biochemical engineering. In addition to covering traditional problems in engineering thermodynamics in the context of biology and materials chemistry, students are also introduced to the thermodynamics of DNA, proteins, polymers and surfaces.

The book includes over 80 detailed worked examples, covering a broad range of scenarios such as fuel cell efficiency, DNA/protein binding, semiconductor manufacturing, and polymer foaming, emphasizing the practical real-world applications of thermodynamic principles; more than 300 carefully tailored homework problems, designed to stretch and extend students’ understanding of key topics, accompanied by an online solution manual for instructors; and all the necessary mathematical background, plus resources summarizing commonly used symbols, useful equations of state, microscopic balances for open systems, and links to useful online tools and datasets.

The book will be released on July 31, 2014, but is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

Schieber speaks at numerous conferences and workshops. In June, he was invited to speak at the US-Poland Workshop on the Thermodynamics of Complex Fluids and Interfaces that was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Future lectures can be found at the following events:

Event: National Institute of Standards and Technology – Workshop on Coarse-Grained Modeling of Polymers and Soft Materials for the Materials Genome Initiative
Lecture: “Nonlinear rheology predictions of highly entangled polymers from coarse-graining atomistic simulations.”
Date: August 6-7, 2014
Location: Gaithersburg, MD

Event: European Condensed Matter Physics conference – Statistical challenges in Single-Particle Tracking colloquium
Lecture: “Diffusion and Microrheology in Viscoelastic Media: Effects of Inertia and Non-Conservative Forces.”
Date: August 24-29, 2014
Location: Paris, France

Event: Multiscale Materials Modeling (MMM2014) – Symposium on Multiscale Mechanics of Polymers, Soft and Biological Materials
Lecture: “Almost Ab Initio Nonlinear Rheology of Entangled Polymers”
Date: October 6-10, 2014
Location: Berkeley Marina, San Francisco Bay, California