Chemical engineering senior German Parada is a natural leader who has advanced every student organization he has become involved with. He also advocates the importance of “soft” skills such as communication, interpersonal relations and teamwork in an engineer’s career, with goals of making technological and process advances mainstream. Exemplary efforts in these areas have awarded Parada the 2013 College of Engineering Dean’s Student Leadership Award and a recent third place finish in an American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Research Paper Competition.
The Dean’s Student Leadership Award is given to an undergraduate engineering student with outstanding leadership outside of the classroom. “Balancing the academic rigor of an engineering curriculum with leadership activities is a significant achievement,” says Gary Mirka, associate dean for Undergraduate and Graduate Education in the College of Engineering, in a congratulatory email to Parada.
Parada has held leadership roles in the AIChE Iowa State student chapter (as publicity chair, outreach chair, treasurer and president), Tau Beta Pi (as treasurer, communications director and co-chair of the 2013 Tau Beta Pi National Convention), CBE Department Chair Student Advisory Committee, and ChE Ambassadors (student-led tours for prospective students and families). He also has participated in other campus organizations and programs, such as Destination Iowa State and the University Honors Program.
He has offered students opportunities to learn about chemical engineering research. “For the AIChE group, we invited professors to showcase their work and show how undergraduate students can participate,” Parada says. The AIChE group set this up in early April for students to consider research in their imminent sophomore, junior and senior years.
With his own research, Parada placed third in the 2013 Mid-America AIChE Regional Conference Research Paper Competition, held April 19-20 at The University of Oklahoma. Parada presented his work in planning and conducting experiments on the bio-inspired synthesis of magnetite nanoparticles, under the direction of Surya Mallapragada, professor, chair and Stanley Chair in Interdisciplinary Engineering. Parada says he used the competition to showcase the quality research done in the chemical and biological engineering department, and as good communication practice for his career.
“I aspire to be a chemical engineering professor,” he says. “Even though I would like to specialize in the field of polymers, I find talking about how biology, chemistry and materials sciences work together to solve problems so thrilling.”