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Filipe Henrique is this year’s recipient of the Dwight E. and Jessie D. Ryland Endowed Graduate Fellowship from the College of Engineering and Applied Science. This fellowship provides $10,000 over two years to a deserving first-year PhD student working in alternative energy or improved energy utilization and efficiency.

The proliferation of plastic products has created an environmental challenge: what should be done with unusable, discarded plastic waste that can harm the environment? Faculty from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering are working on a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project, Hydrogenolysis for Upcycling of Polyesters and Mixed Plastics, to address this serious environmental issue.

Polysaccharides represents an abundant class of biopolymers, of which cellulose in trees and chitin from Crustacea are common examples. Alginates from seaweed have high affinity to divalent cations and form hydrogels by ionic crosslinking.

No universal vaccines exist for infectious diseases like HIV and influenza, largely due to the high frequency with which the pathogens that cause these diseases acquire mutations in their surface proteins. Hear from Assistant Professor Kayla Sprenger as she describes our efforts to address this challenge for HIV using a variety of computational methods that include homology modeling, molecular simulations, mathematical modeling, and machine learning.

Chern-Hooi Lim (PhDChemEngr’15) is the founder and CEO of New Iridium, a spinoff company created by research conducted in part in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He was recently selected for C&EN’s Talented 12, a program that honors young chemists and chemical engineers who are bringing innovation and entrepreneurship to bear on pressing global issues.

Mobile robots combine sensory information with mechanical actuation to move autonomously through complex environments and perform specific tasks (e.g., a robot vacuum cleaner). The miniaturization of such robots to the size of living cells (ca. 2-40 mm) is actively pursued for applications in biomedicine, materials science, and environmental sustainability. In pursuit of these “microrobots”, we seek to understand the many mechanisms underlying the self-propulsion of colloidal particles through viscous fluids. Building on this understanding, we seek to design active particles capable of autonomous behaviors such as navigation of structured environments. In this talk, I discuss two recent efforts – on Quincke oscillators and magnetic topotaxis, respectively – that highlight these complementary aims to understand and design active colloids. In part one, I explain how static electric fields drive the oscillatory motion of micron-scale particles commensurate with the thickness of a field-induced boundary layer in nonpolar electrolytes. In part two, I describe how spatially uniform, time-periodic magnetic fields can be designed to power and direct the migration of ferromagnetic spheres up local gradients in surface topography.

Deep learning has begun a renaissance in chemistry and materials. We can devise and fit models to predict molecular properties in a few hours and deploy them in a web browser. We can create novel generative models that were previously PhD theses in an afternoon.

Sam Goodman (ChemEngr’16) was selected as one of two Outstanding Mentor Award winners for the Spring 2021 semester for his work with sophomore Abigail Hutabarat.

COVID-19 vaccines are just the beginning for mRNA-based therapies; enabling a patient’s body to make almost any given protein could revolutionize care for other viruses, like HIV, as well as various cancers and genetic disorders. However, because mRNA molecules are very fragile, they require extremely low temperatures for storage and transportation. The logistical challenges and expense of maintaining these temperatures must be overcome before mRNA therapies can become truly widespread.

Alumnus Jason Burdick (PhDChemEngr’02) will return as faculty early next year, becoming the first Bowman Endowed Professor.