CBE Researchers Receive Honors at AIChE Annual Meeting
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At the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Annual Meeting in Boston from November 2nd to 6th, 12 undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty from the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) Department in the Riccio College of Engineering (CoE) received acknowledgement for their excellent work in the form of awards, competition prizes, or their presentation of research. According to AIChE, its annual meeting united “academic and industry researchers at all career stages seeking innovation and professional development.” See 2025 AIChE Annual Meeting | AIChE.
The CBE honorees included one faculty member, Associate Professor Chao Zhao of the CBE and BME departments, who received the prestigious Composites Area Mid-Career Professorship Award, covered previously on the CoE websites (see story).
In addition, eight CBE undergraduates, and one BME undergraduate, collected a variety of impressive honors.
Two of these students excelled in the Undergraduate Poster Competition.
CBE major Ethan Ho scored a first place in the Separations III section for his poster on Separation Performance and Tunability of Nonstoichiometric Polyelectrolyte Coacervate Membranes Via Sustainable Aqueous Phase Separation. Ho is advised by CBE Professor Jessica Schiffman, the Gary R. Lapidus Faculty Fellow. Ho was also honored with the Donald F. Othmer Sophomore Academic Excellence Award, which recognizes a second-year student with the highest grade point average in his or her class.
Hayley Norton, a BME major, tallied second place in the poster section on Food Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology XII with her poster reporting on Probiotic Bacterium Lactococcus Lactis Adhesion on Polydimethylsiloxane Substrates to Model Maintenance of Healthy Gut Flora. Schiffman also advises Norton.
In addition to those two undergrads, CBE student Hagen Lu received the First Year Student Recognition Award, which honors “outstanding first-year chemical-engineering students who demonstrate exceptional academic performance, enthusiasm for the field, and active participation in their AIChE Student Chapter activities.”
Four CBE undergraduates also presented their research at the Undergraduate Poster Session. Ria Mehrotra, who is advised by CBE Assistant Professor Zhu (Clark) Chen, presented work on Electrocatalytic Reduction of Nitrate to Ammonia: Investigating the Role of Cationic Contaminants. Jong-hyuk Park, advised by CBE Associate Professor Peng Bai, delivered a poster on Learning Transferable Zeonet Representations Using 3D U-Nets. In addition, Autumn Voyer presented her research on Kombucha-Derived, Self-Regenerating Water Filtration Membranes, and Julie Le gave a poster on Additive Manufacturing of Crosslinkable Amine‐Epoxy Coatings. Schiffman also advises both Voyer and Le.
AIChE recognized four CBE graduate students with awards, beginning with Omeet Patel, who is advised by CBE Distinguished Professor and Department Head Dimitrios Maroudas. The AIChE Nuclear Engineering Division (NED) selected Patel as the 2025 recipient of the Graduate Student Investigation NED Award for Best Presentation for his talk entitled Modeling and Simulation of Surface Morphological Response of Plasma-Facing Tungsten. In addition to receiving a $500 monetary award, Omeet has been invited to give the keynote presentation at the 2026 NED Graduate Student Investigation Session as part of the 2026 AIChE Annual Meeting in Minneapolis on November 8 through 12 in 2026.
Two more CBE graduate students received Women in Chemical Engineering (WIC) Travel Awards, including Faviola Villariny-Rosado, advised by CBE Professor Sarah Perry and covered in a previous story on the CoE websites (see story). Another recipient of the WIC travel award was Ph.D. student Peiyao Zhao, whose advisor is Assistant Professor Jimi Oke of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. The WIC award supports travel for graduate students, post-doctoral associates, early-career individuals, and young professionals.
Beyond those honorees, CBE grad student Muhammad Ali Shah received a Travel Award from the AIChE Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division, and he also earned a second-place Best Presentation Award from the AIChE Inorganic Materials Area. Earlier this year, Shah received a Kokes Award from North American Catalysis Society (see that). His advisor is CBE Professor Wei Fan.
Overall, it was a highly productive and visible conference with representation across all levels of the CBE department - undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and alumni - and participation in numerous talks, chaired sessions, and panel discussions, culminating with an excellent CBE departmental reception. (December 2025)