Cooper attends 2014 NAE Frontiers of Engineering Symposium

Dr. Matthew Cooper, teaching assistant professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University, was one of about 100 top young engineers attending the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) 2014 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium (US FOE) Oct. 26-29 in Irvine, Calif.

The NAE invites young engineers who have made pioneering technical and research contributions, though it also looks for leadership qualities and an interest in how developments in other areas relate to the engineers’ own fields.

NAE hosts the conference to help spur US innovation by bringing together engineers from industry, universities and government labs to share ideas and learn from research and best practices in education.

One of Cooper’s current projects is developing laboratory and process safety content for chemical engineering courses. The course content introduces concepts regarding safety throughout the chemical engineering curriculum. He hopes to reduce the number of safety incidents at engineering and laboratory facilities across the country.

Cooper is also interested in the application of plagiarism screening software in the chemical engineering curriculum. He is investigating the effectiveness of screening software in identifying plagiarism and identifying attitudes of undergraduate CBE students toward their instructors using such software.

This year, Cooper was awarded the 2014 Outstanding New Teacher Award from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Southeastern Section as well as the 2014 NC State Outstanding Teacher Award.