Research strengths and labs in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Our faculty continues to be recognized for its technological innovation and contributions to engineering science fundamentals in the fields of fluid mechanics and transport phenomena, scientific computing, bioengineering, materials science, nanotechnology, and sustainable energy. The  Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering is committed to academic excellence in an environment that appreciates individual efforts and fosters interdisciplinary collaborations.

Synthetic biology; metabolic engineering; engineered bacterial consortia; biosensors; living, antifouling, and antibacterial materials; thermostable vaccines; next-generation mRNA manufacturing; microfluidics for structural biology; artificial cell membranes; biomimetic materials; tissue-engineered trabecular bone marrow models; bone marrow microenvironmental regulation of disseminated tumor cell biology; immunoengineering; cancer immunotherapy; drug delivery; nanomaterials for vaccines and chronic inflammatory diseases, nanomedicine; nanomaterials for clinical imaging and diagnostics; targeted bacteriolytic therapy of tumors; localized quantification of tumor metabolism; bacterial migration and segregation in solid tumors; photodynamic therapy; bio-imaging, and precision medicine; biomaterials for pain management; and point-of-care testing devices. 

 

Research areas include the sustainable production of fuels, monomers, and chemicals; energy conversion and storage; environmental remediation; polymer upcycling; carbon capture and use; and advanced separations. Examples: electrochemical CO2 conversion; low-temperature water electrolysis; electrochemical and thermochemical biomass upgrade; methanol conversion to ethylene, propylene, and sustainable aviation fuels; electrochemical energy storage; photo- and photo-electrocatalysis for solar fuel generation. Key expertise: design and synthesis of novel catalysts, especially nanoporous materials (zeolites), supported catalysts, and plasmonic materials; advanced characterization methods; atomistic simulation methods for heterogeneous catalysis; fundamental studies of catalytically active sites, surface chemistry, and mechanisms by operando spectroscopy, kinetics, and full integration of theory and modeling with experiments.

Renewable polymers and green engineering; bioinspired materials design; complex coacervation; sustainable and recyclable adhesives and plastics; polymer colloid synthesis; self and directed colloidal assembly; interfacial phenomena; soft matter; emulsions and foams; computational materials science; semiconductor thin films and nanostructures; graphene derivatives and composite 2D materials; plasma-facing materials in nuclear fusion devices; combinatorial materials synthesis; 2D nanomaterials for energy and catalysis; perovskite solar cells by graphene encapsulation; exfoliated phosphorene; graphene metamaterials; graphene applications in microfluidics and nanocomposites; organic semiconductors; photovoltaics; rheology of soft matter; novel methods for extracting materials properties from rheological data; gelation & glass transition in amorphous materials; charge & energy transfer in electrochemical and optoelectronic materials & devices.

 

Computational quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics: quantum chemistry, density functional theory calculations, molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations; establishing process-structure-properties-function relationships in materials; multi-scale modeling and simulation: atomistic-to-continuum modeling of materials, modeling and simulation of dynamical phenomena over disparate time scales, microstructure and surface morphological evolution; computational fluid dynamics; nonlinear analysis of complex systems; process system-level modeling; system-level analysis based on atomic-scale simulators; and AI/data science for materials discovery.