Iowa State University’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering researchers are leading two of five new projects announced by BioMADE to advance the United States bioeconomy and biomanufacturing goals. These projects were funded through a special BioMADE Project Call on advancing bioreactor design and development thanks to support from Schmidt Futures. They aim to use innovative technologies in bioreactor hardware, software, sensors, modeling, and automation to produce biobased products more efficiently at a commercial scale.
Senathiraja is working with Chris Cornelius, the Dr. Thomas D. McGee and Dr. Ick-Jhin Rick Yoon Department Chair in Materials Science and Engineering/Wilkinson Chair in Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemical Engineering, by courtesy, to promote green energy by optimizing and increasing the performance and durability of hydrogen fuel cell membranes. Her research and leadership have resulted in her receiving several awards, including the local Guiding Start Award from the Graduate Society of Women Engineers.
Growing up, Efraín Rodríguez-Ocasio did not foresee himself pursuing a Ph.D. in chemical engineering in a state he thought of as the “corn place.”
But after discovering the opportunity to work with Laura Jarboe, Cargill Professor of Chemical Engineering, Rodríguez-Ocasio has found Iowa State fertile ground to grow a career in bioplastics research.
Born into a family of doctors in India, Dhananjay Dileep, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, grew up wanting to help fix the world. Today, Dileep is working toward this goal by making the chemical recycling of plastics more commercially viable.
A $430,000 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) is helping Building a World of Difference Faculty Fellow and assistant professor Luke Roling develop new materials to build next-generation microelectronic devices.
This summer, an expanded BioMaP REU program provided 18 college students from across the nation with the opportunity to work under the mentorship of ISU chemical and biological engineering faculty members and graduate students to gain hands-on research experience in topics that match their educational interests and goals.
Postdocs Jungkuk Lee and Susheel Kumar Nethi of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (CBE) have been awarded Postdoctoral Scholar Excellence Awards from the Graduate College of Iowa State University.
The work being done by the research groups of Chemical and Biological Engineering professors Eric Cochran, Brent Shanks, and Jean-Philippe Tessonnier is making headlines. The article “ Bioenabled Platform to Access Polyamides with Built-In Target Properties,” which is a result of their research, has been featured on the June cover of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).
Abigail Koep, entered the chemical and biological engineering Ph.D. program in 2022 and is one of only three ISU students to receive the illustrious Graduate Research Fellowship this year.
