{"id":88859,"date":"2019-05-10T17:18:55","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T22:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/?p=88859"},"modified":"2019-05-30T16:15:33","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T21:15:33","slug":"bagpipes-playing-student-highlights-engineering-graduation-ceremonies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/bagpipes-playing-student-highlights-engineering-graduation-ceremonies\/","title":{"rendered":"Bagpipe-Playing Student Highlights Engineering Graduation Ceremonies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Derek Reed plays bagpipes at a School of Engineering commencement ceremony. Submitted photo<\/p><\/div>\n

At age 13, Derek Reed began playing the bagpipes purely out of curiosity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t play any other musical instruments at the time, and the history that I learned about the bagpipes and about Scotland was fascinating to me,\u201d said Reed, now a chemical engineering graduate student at the University of Mississippi<\/a>. \u201cI knew someone in my hometown who formerly played with the Lyon College Pipe Band and was willing to teach me free of charge. I learned very quickly and went from a practice chanter to a full set of bagpipes in about 16 months.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, the Jonesboro, Arkansas, native continued to learn from world-renowned instructors such as Willie McCallum, Angus MacColl, Sandy Jones and others at camps and workshops across the country. At 18, Reed attended Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas, on a bagpiping scholarship, joining the Lyon College Pipe Band under Pipe Major Jimmy Bell.<\/p>\n

The musician, who earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Lyon College, decided he wanted to further his education at UM. The Department of Chemical Engineering<\/a> at Ole Miss worked with him, allowing him to take the requisite undergraduate classes within a year to be admitted to the graduate program with a research assistantship.<\/p>\n

\u201cDistance was also an important part of my decision,\u201d he said. \u201cOxford is close to Jonesboro, where my parents live, as well as Batesville, Arkansas, where (my fianc\u00e9e) Carolyn was finishing her undergraduate degree at Lyon College. After one year here at Ole Miss, she enrolled in the new Master of Arts in Teaching program here at the university. She is now a sixth-grade teacher in Pope, and she just finished her master\u2019s degree here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years ago, Reed\u2019s bagpipe-playing skills began capturing the attention of those on campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not entirely sure how the information traveled, but the Dean\u2019s Office in the School of Engineering<\/a> must have determined that I am a piper in addition to being an engineering grad student,\u201d Reed said. \u201cBefore being contacted by the Dean\u2019s Office to play for Commencement, I had practiced the pipes on campus a number of times in the Grove and on (the) Circle. I even played a few events (including a wedding and a memorial service in Paris-Yates Chapel) on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the Dean\u2019s Office asked Reed to play for Commencement, he was honored. Since 2017, the bagpipes have become something of a tradition for the engineering graduating class.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the past two years, I have had seniors and other grad students asking me if I would be playing for Commencement,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have been very excited when I said, \u2018yes.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

While Reed makes bagpipes sound good, playing them is far from easy. It usually takes an aspiring piper about three to four years before he or she is ready to perform as a soloist, and a lifetime to perfect the craft.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bagpipe is a very difficult instrument to learn, because it requires precise finger work, breath control, rhythm, lots of coordination, understanding of reeds and, most importantly, years and years of diligent practice,\u201d he said. \u201cLearning the bagpipe requires that you spend about a year on a practice chanter before getting a full set of pipes, and it can be very discouraging at first because of how difficult it can be to make them sound properly. Even with over 12 years of experience, I am still learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reed\u2019s academic achievements are just as impressive as his musicality. He was an invited speaker at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers\u2019 annual meeting in Pittsburgh in fall 2018. He gave a podium presentation on his research on magnetic surfactants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had never been to a conference before and thought that my research may only get a poster presentation, if anything at all,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a good experience, and I learned a lot about the research going on across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other notable recognitions include winning first prize at the UM Graduate Student Council’s Research Symposium earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI already had most of the presentation made up from the AIChE meeting, so I entered on a whim,\u201d Reed said. \u201cI had no idea that I would end up winning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two of Reed\u2019s favorite engineering courses were John O\u2019Haver\u2019s Surfactants and Colloids classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese two classes taught me that the chemistry and thermodynamics of surfaces are everywhere, particularly in detergents, personal care products, paints and other products you interact with every day,\u201d he said. \u201cThese two classes have really changed how I look at the world and, in particular, how I look at shampoo bottles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other engineering professors Reed praised are Sasan Nouranian, David Carroll and Mike Gill.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Nouranian\u2019s Advanced Transport Phenomena I & II classes were really difficult, but he broke down the material in a way that was much easier to understand,\u201d he said. \u201cMr. Carroll and Mr. Gill both have extensive experience in industry and bring this perspective to their classes. They not only teach the material for their courses but also how different companies work, what they look for and what you will experience day to day in a chemical plant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reed, who completed his coursework in May, hopes to finish his thesis and successfully defend it this summer. His research is on the relatively new field of magnetic surfactants, their properties and how these properties can be used to create low-energy separation processes.<\/p>\n

\u201cSurfactants are a class of chemicals that are everywhere, from soaps and detergents, to emulsions, to personal care lotions and creams, to paints and coatings, to cell walls, and even in your lungs,\u201d he explained. \u201cSurfactants tend to go to interfaces, such as the interface between air and water, reduce the interfacial tension and form aggregates called micelles above a certain concentration.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last property is what makes surfactants useful for separation processes (particularly as detergents), as they can encapsulate oils or other contaminants, allowing them to be separated from water.<\/p>\n

\u201cMagnetic surfactants are just surfactants (that) incorporate a magnetic moiety into the molecular structure, making the surfactant and its micelles responsive to magnetic fields,\u201d he said. \u201dRight now, 15 percent of the global energy demand is for separation processes, much of this being energy-intensive processes such as distillation.<\/p>\n

“The goal of this research is to develop magnetic surfactants (that) can be manipulated simply with magnetic fields, essentially allowing you to turn the separation process \u2018on\u2019 or \u2018off\u2019 by adding or removing the magnet, thereby reducing the amount of energy expended on routine separation processes.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, magnetic surfactants have only been used successfully in small-scale niche applications, such as manipulating single strands of DNA and removing molecular contaminants from the surface of graphene. Scaling up these separation processes means developing magnetic surfactants that show high magnetic response, are economical and have a high degree of stability in water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis field is currently still in its infancy, but perhaps one day we will use magnetic surfactants to purify water or remediate oil spills in lakes and rivers,\u201d Reed said. \u201cAfter graduating, I plan on using my knowledge of surfactants and interfaces by pursuing a career in the chemical industry, probably in specialty chemicals, paints and coatings, or personal care products.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reed owns a Shetland sheepdog named Juliet, who loves going on walks at Lamar Park in Oxford. Outside of class, he enjoys playing golf, long-distance running and, of course, playing his bagpipes, as well as teaching bagpipe lessons.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At age 13, Derek Reed began playing the bagpipes purely out of curiosity. \u201cI didn\u2019t play any other musical instruments at the time, and the history that I learned about the bagpipes and about Scotland was fascinating to me,\u201d said Reed, now a chemical engineering graduate student at the University of Mississippi. \u201cI knew someoneRead the story …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1379,178],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBagpipe-Playing Student Highlights Engineering Graduation Ceremonies - Ole Miss News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/bagpipes-playing-student-highlights-engineering-graduation-ceremonies\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bagpipe-Playing Student Highlights Engineering Graduation Ceremonies - 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