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 Understand How the Nervous System Regulates Gut Inflammation
Assistant Professor Abigail Koppes, chemical engineering, recently received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. There’s a growing awareness of the connection between the human brain and the intestinal tract, but many questions remain.
NSF CAREER Award for Advancing Battery Materials
DiPietro Assistant Professor Joshua Gallaway, chemical engineering, recently received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. The project will conduct research on advanced battery materials that have the potential for greater energy density and cycle life, while operating in non-flammable water-based electrolytes.
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
Bencherif’s Research Featured on the Front Cover of Biomaterials Science
ChE Assistant Professor Sidi A. Bencherif’s research on “Engineering a macroporous fibrin-based sequential interpenetrating polymer network for dermal tissue engineering” was featured on the front cover of Biomaterials Science.
Nature Materials Article on PGM-free Catalyst for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell
Li Jiao, PhD’21, chemical engineering, currently working in Affiliated Faculty Sanjeev Mukerjee’s research group, was published in Nature Materials for “Chemical vapour deposition of Fe–N–C oxygen reduction catalysts with full utilization of dense Fe–N4 sites,” developing a model catalyst with scientific breakthroughs and practical significance.
Bencherif Selected as 2021 ACS PMSE Young Investigator
ChE Assistant Professor Sidi A. Bencherif was recently selected as one of the 2021 Young Investigators by the American Chemical Society’s Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (ACS PMSE).
PhD Student Wins Third Alpha Fund Prototype Grant
Zach Rogers, a ChE PhD student in the Bencherif Lab, was recently awarded his third Alpha Fund Prototype Grant for his proposal, “Oxygen-controlling cell culture (OCC) systems”.