Welcome to Shimo@UMN Duluth
Who is Shimo?
I am an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota-Duluth (UMN Duluth). I started working at UMN Duluth in Spring 2016, started teaching in Spring 2017, and officially joined the chemical engineering department in Fall 2018.
My undergraduate degree is in chemical engineering, and my M.S. and Ph.D. are in environmental engineering. Prior to coming to UMN Duluth, I had 8-9 years of work experience outside of academia.
I am from Nagano, Japan. I enjoy casual camping, hiking, biking, fishing, and foraging with my family. I am particularly interested in mushrooms and crabs. I like listening to classical/alternative/glam rock music like Queen, X Japan, and Muse.
Shimo's teaching schedule - Fall 2024
I am scheduled to teach the following courses in Fall 2024.
ChE3112 Heat and Mass Transfer, TH 8:00-8:50am
ChE3032 Chemical Process Modeling and Simulation, TH 1:00-2:15pm
ChE3501 Product Development Validation (online)
What's new
In Spring 2025, I am planning to hire and work with two LAs (Learning Assistants), one for ChE2121 Thermodynamics and the other for ChE3032 Chemical Process Modeling and Simulation. If you are UMN Duluth ChE students and interested in becoming my LA, please apply via this website. The deadline is November 3, 2024.
https://sites.google.com/d.umn.edu/scsestudentsuccessprograms/la-student-information
I participated in another outreach event at the end of October. It was titled "Halloween at the Planetarium" and was organized by Jessica Rogers, UMD's Marshall W. Alworth Planetarium director. I knew this event was for younger children, focused on elementary-school and pre-school aged children. So I used Midjourney to create AI art based on prompts that the young participants submitted. I hope they enjoyed my demo. Shown below is an example of AI art created by the children.
Prompt: A unicorn, a witch, 2 dragons, and a dad go to the planetarium.
I participated in two outreach events in the first half of 2024. One is STEM Discovery Day in February 2024, and the other is Upward Bound Engineering Day Camp in June 2024. Both events were coordinated by SCSE outreach director Dr. Amy Kireta. I used Arduino to demonstrate process control for engineering safety.
In Spring 2024, I hired a ChE senior Jonathan Muehlbauer to be my LA (Learning Assistant) for ChE2121 Thermodynamics. The Learning Assistant program is a new initiative at SCSE to support and improve classroom learning primarily in freshman and sophomore courses. I enjoyed working with him, and hopefully our sophomore students found him helpful.