2015 Graduate Research Symposium

On Friday, Oct. 23, 2015, the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering held the 14th annual Graduate Research Symposium.

Symposium presentations were judged by Dr. Josh Gray (PhD ’04, Alkire), Program Manager with Boeing’s Surface and Analytics Lab; Dr. Ibrahim Sendijarevic (PhD ’02, McHugh), Business Development Manager with Troy Polymers; Dr. Anastasia Vaia (PhD ’03, Sahinidis), PTA Process Optimization Manager with BP; and Dr. Yongbo Yuan (former Illinois ChBE postdoc), Scientist III with ADM.

Congratulations to winners of the 2015 symposium.

Poster Presentations

First Place: Katelyn Dahlke, part of Assistant Professor Charles Sing’s research group, with “Kinetics of DNA-binding Dimeric Proteins.”

Second Place: Andy Chang from Assistant Professor David Flaherty’s group with his poster, “Deconvoluting the Effects of Solvation and Acid Strength on Zeolite Catalysis: Model Systems for Complex Materials.”

Third Place (tie): Sumit Verma from Professor Paul Kenis’ research group with “Electrochemical Reduction of CO2 to Value Added C1-C2 Chemicals and Fuels” and Kai-Chieh Tsao from Professor Hong Yang’s Research Group and his poster, “Continuous Production of Uniform Carbon-Supported Catalysts of Metal Nanocubes and Nanooctahedra Using Carbon Monoxide-Mediated Processes.”

Oral Presentations

First Place: Danielle Mai of Associate Professor Charles Schroeder’s group with, “Single Molecule Dynamics of Branched DNA Polymers.”

Second Place: Ran Chao of Professor Huimin Zhao’s group with “Building “iBioFAB” for automated synthetic biology.”

Third Place: Neil Wilson of Assistant Professor David Flaherty’s group for “Mechanism and Factors that Determine Selectivity for H202 Formation on Pd and AuPd clusters via Direct Synthesis.”

Other graduate students participating in the 14th Annual Graduate Research Symposium included the following: Zehua Bao, Nicholas Clay, Arkaprava Dan, Todd Freestone, Kandis Gillard, Kai-Wen Hsiao, Jiazhang Lian, Sam Hamedi Rad, Ankur Taneja, and Megan Witzke.