Research and technology brings innovation to chemical engineering. From growing new cartilage cells to help osteoarthritus, to improving drug delivery for cancer patients, chemical engineering offers new solutions to some of our greatest societal challenges.
Spotlight Stories
NSF CAREER Award to Fight Cancer
Sidi Bencherif, assistant professor of chemical engineering, recently received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation to develop biomaterials that generate oxygen. These materials could help researchers understand how low oxygen environments affect the immune system and potentially be used to supply oxygen to help train immune cells to fight cancer.
NSF CAREER Award to Address Cardiovascular Disease
Eno Ebong, assistant professor of chemical engineering, recently received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. She and her team are studying endothelial cells that line blood vessels to better understand how the blood flow environment and stiffness of the underlying tissue contribute to cardiovascular disease risk.
Engineering in Action
World-Renowned Cooperative Education
Bradley Priem, BS, chemical engineering, had two co-ops that gave him the ability to delve into a particular industry. At Synlogic he was a bioanalytical chemist and bacterial engineer creating e-coli strains, and at bluebird bio he was an upstream process development engineer for gene production. He now knows he wants to go into the biotech industry and is interested in graduate school too.
Global Research Co-op
Taylor Wilde, BS chemical engineering student, worked in a research lab at École Normale Supérieure, a university in Paris. Wilde collaborated with a postdoctoral researcher to create nanomaterials using a chemical vapor deposition, or CVD, furnace. It helped him land his third co-op at GVD Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where worked again with a CVD furnace. Ultimately, Wilde wants to work in renewable energy and contribute to the efforts across the globe to lower society’s carbon footprint.
Recent News
Abigail Koppes and Ryan Koppes Published in the Journal of Neuroscience Research
ChE Assistant Professors Abigail Koppes and Ryan Koppes published their research in the Journal of Neuroscience titled: “The effects of low intensity focused ultrasonic stimulation on dorsal root ganglion neurons and Schwann cells in vitro.”
Webster Receives Funding with Spanish Researchers to Develop Better Implants
ChE Professor Thomas Webster and Professor Yadir Torres Hernandez from the University of Seville, Spain; PI have secured funding from the Spanish Government (via the National Research program) for a project entitled “Titanium-based implants with adapted stiffness, biofunctionalized surface and pores filled with biodegradable, antibacterial and potential therapeutic polymers”.
Jones Awarded Grant to Support Research on “Enabling a Lab-on-a-Faucet”
ChE Assistant Professor A-Andrew D. Jones, III received a $10k grant titled “Enabling a Lab-On-A-Faucet” from the Sloan Scholars Mentoring Network of the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Willits Selected as a BMES Fellow
ChE Professor and Chair Rebecca Willits selected as a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society.