UMass Trustees Appoint CBE’s Jessica Schiffman to Armstrong-Siadat Endowed Professorship

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In December, the UMass Board of Trustees appointed Professor Jessica D. Schiffman of the UMass Amherst Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) Department to the esteemed position of Armstrong-Siadat Endowed Professor in Materials Science and Engineering. This is a five-year appointment taking effect in January of 2026. Since 2022, Schiffman has served as the inaugural recipient of the Gary Lapidus Faculty Fellowship in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

“Jessica is a renowned leading researcher in the field of materials science and engineering,” says Distinguished Professor and CBE Department Head Dimitrios Maroudas. “She also serves as the director of the [Riccio College of Engineering] Materials Engineering certificate and deputy editor of the [American Chemical Society] journal ACS Applied Engineering Materials and plays a key leadership role in the campus-wide Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Materials Science and Engineering. Jessica, congratulations for this well-deserved honor!”

The mission of the Armstrong-Siadat Endowed Professorship is “to establish and support research programs in the field of materials science and engineering.” The professorship was established through gifts from John and Elizabeth Armstrong and Barry and Afsaneh Siadat. Schiffman succeeds CBE Professor Nianqiang (Nick) Wu, who was the inaugural Armstrong-Siadat Endowed Professor.

The main topics of the Schiffman lab include materials engineered from natural polyelectrolytes, membrane science, antibacterial/antifouling strategies, amongst other topics. As Schiffman, an expert in bioinspired and living materials, explains about her Schiffman Research Group, “The mission of our laboratory is to use green engineering to design next-generation materials that improve human health and the environment. We develop a broad range of materials – from fouling-resistant biomedical devices to filters that produce clean water.”

Schiffman’s laboratory has been well-supported by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Laboratory, and various corporate sponsors. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles on basic and applied research topics at the interface of materials engineering, polymer science, and microbiology. In that context, she has also delivered more than 100 invited seminars and keynote presentations on these topics to audiences around the world.

Among many other honors, Schiffman is currently serving as the inaugural Deputy Editor of peer-reviewed journal from the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Applied Engineering Materials (ACS AENM) is an international and interdisciplinary forum devoted to original research covering all aspects of engineered materials. The publication is a sister journal within the ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces family of journals. ACS AENM has been publishing monthly issues since January of 2023, and in the summer of 2025 the journal received its first impact factor of 3.5.

In recognition of Schiffman’s dedication to mentoring and teaching, UMass Amherst has honored her with the campus-wide Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award and the ADVANCE Faculty Mentor Award. The Riccio College of Engineering has presented her with its Outstanding Teaching Award and Barbara H. and Joseph I. Goldstein Outstanding Junior Faculty Award.

As an administrator, Schiffman served as the interim department head of Chemical Engineering during the 2021-2022 academic year and, prior to that, as the associate Chemical Engineering department head in 2020 and 2021. 

Schiffman earned her B.S. in Ceramic and Materials Engineering (2003) and her M.Eng. in Materials Science and Engineering (2004) from Rutgers University before working as an engineer in the division of research and development at Stryker Orthopedics. In 2009, Schiffman received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Drexel University.