Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering, Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico
Omar Alberto Movil-Cabrera is an Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico (PUPR). He received his doctorate in Chemical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, and his bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering from Universidad del Atlántico-Colombia. Prior to joining PUPR as a faculty in 2016, Movil was a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at Ohio University. Movil also worked as a quality auditor and technical support engineer in the food industry, before pursuing his doctoral studies.
Movil’s teaching interests include engineering materials, mass transfer operations, thermodynamics, and phase equilibria. His current research interests include the fabrication and characterization of bio-based composite materials for applications in 3D printing. Movil has also been appointed twice as a summer visiting faculty at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) as part of a program sponsored by The U.S. Department of Energy. Recently, Dr. Movil was awarded a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his project titled: “Enhancing Undergraduate Engineering Education Using an Integrated Additive Manufacturing Approach”. This project aims to explore the effectiveness of using additive manufacturing (3D-printing) as a tool to enhance engineering education and foster multidisciplinary collaborations among PUPR faculty. Due to his initiative, Movil has received the PUPR Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Presidential Award during the past two years. More recently, Movil has served as an NSF panel reviewer, and took part in the Lever for Change Meeting hosted by AAAS, with support from NSF.
Apart from his fascination for Chemical Engineering, Movil is an amateur swimmer and a salsa dancer.