Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

MS ChE, 1995, Prof. Robert Brown
PhD ChE, 1998, Prof. Richard Seagrave

It has been ten years since graduation and my trajectory so far has been quite "non-linear," so to speak. I started working in Naperville for Amoco in 1998 in linear alpha olefins process development. Two years later I transferred to one of our alpha olefins plants in Pasadena, TX, in a research/process engineer role.  I returned to Naperville in 2002 in a new role of research engineer in gas-phase polymerization of propylene, doing mostly computer modeling work.

Two years later BP sold a big chunk of its chemicals business to the privately-owned, UK-based chemical group Ineos, and as a result, I transferred to the Houston area. This time as a process engineer at Ineos' (formerly BP's) polypropylene plant in Alvin, performing computer modeling and new catalyst implementation work.

In 2007 I decided to pursue a more promising role as a principal engineer in Lyondell's PO (propylene oxide) central engineering group at their Bayport (Pasadena) plant where I did off-line non-linear optimization and close plant support. It was a very exciting and rewarding role, and Lyondell was a great company, but I could not resist "the call of the mother ship" (BP) much longer. So after eight months with Lyondell I returned to BP and Naperville in December.  I am still in an R&D role, but this time in Refining (not Chemicals) Technology. I am a principal research engineer and work in the area of Advanced Fluid Cat Cracking as a pilot plant engineer. I actually work in the same department as Dan Coy and the same division as Dan Marsh. 

My wife, Tina, is a French high school teacher (whom I met at Iowa State, 14 years ago), and we have a wonderful three and a half year old boy named Daniel.

Daniel C. Coy grew up in Ames and is proud to have been a member of the community and an alumnus of Iowa State University.   From his first visits to VESHA open houses as a schoolboy with his parents (also alumni of Iowa State and still members of the Ames community), Dan was attracted to the Chemical Engineering program.  Participation in that program, both as an undergraduate and graduate student, has prepared him well for a diversified and successful career.  Participation in the graduate program held another extremely valuable benefit for Dan -- he met his future wife Kay Park there.  She was just finishing up her undergraduate work in chemical engineering when they met.  He and Kay married shortly after his graduation in 1993, and they now live in Naperville, Illinois with their two children Brandon (10) and Mira (7).

Dan received his B.S. degree magna cum laude in 1986.  After two years with Procter & Gamble as a Process Engineer, he returned to Iowa State University to pursue a Ph. D. in Chemical Engineering.  His dissertation, Visualization of Fundamental Thermodynamic Surfaces using Advanced Computer Graphics, comprises an extensive set of visualizations of the fundamental energy and equation-of-state surfaces originally postulated by J. Willard Gibbs.  The work is showcased at http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jolls/  Dan was an Amoco Doctoral Research Fellow and received the ISU Research Achievement Award for this work.

After receiving his Ph. D, Dan took an industrial research position with the Nalco Chemical Company pilot plant.  At Nalco, he was a key member of the Ultimer® team that commercialized several revolutionary water treatment polymers.  For his contributions, he was awarded an R&D 100 Award, the U.S. Presidential Green Chemistry Award, The Illinois Pollution Prevention Award, and the Nalco Chairman's Achievement Award.  Dan spent four years at Nalco developing advanced new Computational Fluid Dynamics techniques for modeling stirred tank reactors and other process equipment.  The results were used to improve equipment from the laboratory to commercial reactors.  His collaborative efforts with Cray Research and the University of Alberta were presented at multiple meetings of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the North American Mixing Forum.  During his last two years at Nalco, Dan was Group Leader of the Ultimer® research team.

Dan joined Nanophase Technologies Corporation team at the end of 1999 as a Senior Scientist.  Dan's first work included applying Computational Fluid Dynamics modeling to Nanophase Plasma Vapor Synthesis and NanoArc® Synthesis to bring about significant improvements in process efficiencies and product quality.  A particle classifier design based on this work is patent pending.  Dan is also a key member of the team that developed the Nanophase commercial dispersion process used to supply high-quality dispersions for extremely demanding applications such as Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP), high-end glass polishing, and abrasion resistant clear coatings for high-end paints.  Dan was promoted to Director of Engineering in 2002.  In this position, Dan is using his broad technical experience to ensure that engineering efforts are tightly aligned with the business needs, and help communicate the technical capabilities of the company to customers and investors.

Dan received the Iowa State University Professional Progress in Engineering Award in 2004.  He was an invited nanotechnology speaker at the Purdue University Lecture Series in 2006.  In the fall of 2003, Dan was elected to second vice chair of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.  The position automatically succeeded to First Vice Chair in 2004, Programming Chair in 2005, and Chair of the Forum in 2006.

Finally, in the spring of 2007, Dan took a new position as Computational Fluid Dynamics Project Leader with BP Refinery Technology at their Naperville, Illinois Campus.