Graduate Research Symposium
The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Graduate Student Advisory Council host an annual Graduate Research Symposium. Graduate students present their work in the form of either a poster or an oral presentation.
Research areas include a range of topics, such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, computational science, and energy applications. Invited judges are typically Illinois alumni from industry and academia who help us identify the best poster and oral presentations. The symposium also provides students with one-on-one opportunities to network with the judges.
Congratulations to this year's winners!
2025 Poster Presentation Winners
1st Place
Song Yin
Computational Chemistry and Artificial Intelligence Guided Study of Lasso Peptide Folding
2nd Place
Feray Buyuktopcu
Tandem Plasma and Electrochemical Treatment for Near-Complete Defluorination of PFOA
3rd Place
Michael Taleff
Measuring Termination Rates in Living Polymerizations via the Molecular Weight Distribution
2025 Oral Presentation Winners
1st Place
Ankit Gautam
First-Principles Design of Materials for sustainable Energy Generation and Efficient Separation Technologies
2nd Place
Vijay Shah
Enhancing Performance of PDMS Nanomembrane-Based CO2 Capture Through O2 Removal
3rd Place
Ashwin Bale
Nanoscale infrared imaging for metabolic mapping in single-cells
2025 Graduate Research Symposium winners, left to right: Song Yin, Ankit Gautam, Ashwin Bale, Michael Taleff, Vijay Shah, Feray Buyuktopcu
2025 Judging Panel
Ayman Allian (BS 00, MS 01)
Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ayman D. Allian serves as a senior director at Eli Lilly, where he oversees strategic technical guidance for drug development, acting as a central resource for process and control strategy across the company’s small molecule portfolio. In addition, Allian leads Lilly’s corporate chemical hazard laboratory, supporting research and manufacturing sites around the globe. His career focuses on the development of safe, robust, and efficient unit operations in the lab to ensure their successful scale-up right-the-first time. He earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2000. He joined the first wave of the joint master's program between U. of I. and the National University of Singapore cohort, later returning to NUS to complete his PhD in 2006. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, he launched his career in the pharmaceutical sector. Allian has authored numerous publications, patents, and book chapters, and one of his influential works on industry’s best practices for thermal hazards assessment has been downloaded over 45,000 times. He currently serves on the scientific advisory board for Purdue Process Safety and he recently received the prestigious ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award in 2024.
Bryan Boudouris (BS 04)
Vice President for Research & Economic Development and Professor, University of Alabama
Bryan W. Boudouris is the Vice President for Research & Economic Development and a professor in the Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering at The University of Alabama, roles he has held since April 2024. Prior to Alabama, he was the R. Norris and Eleanor Shreve Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Charles D. Davidson School of Chemical Engineering and a professor (by courtesy) in the Department of Chemistry at Purdue University where he also served as the Associate Vice President for Strategic Interdisciplinary Research. Boudouris received his B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2004. After receiving his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2009, he conducted postdoctoral research from 2009 to 2011 at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Since starting his independent career at Purdue University in 2011, he has been the recipient of many awards including the AFOSR YIP award, the DARPA YFA, the NSF CAREER Award, the AIChE Owens Corning Early Career Award, the Saville Lectureship at Princeton University, and the John H. Dillon Medal from the APS.
Chandra Raman (MS 02, PhD 05)
Innovation Portfolio Manager, CertainTeed
Chandra Raman is currently the Innovation Portfolio Manager at CertainTeed, a subsidiary of Saint-Gobain, facilitating strategy and portfolio management for CertainTeed. Prior to CertainTeed, he managed the innovation effort for the Life Sciences business at Saint-Gobain focusing on Strategic Marketing and Business Development in emerging technologies. He has held roles in Business Management, Business Development and R&D over the course of his career at GE Advanced Materials, Momentive Technologies and Geon Performance Solutions. Chandra has overseen product development and launches serving customers in a wide range of industries including Aerospace, Semiconductors, Electronics, and Plastics, and he is an inventor on ten patents issued globally. Chandra obtained his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under the guidance of professor Daniel Pack in 2005. He also obtained his Masters at the University of Illinois under the guidance of Anthony J. McHugh after completing his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering at IIT Madras in India.
Meredith Sellers (PhD 11)
Principal Engineer, Exponent Inc.
Meredith Sellers is a Principal Engineer in the Metallurgy & Corrosion Engineering Practice at Exponent Inc., an engineering and scientific consulting firm. As a Licensed Professional Chemical Engineer, she leverages her expertise to evaluate and investigate failures associated with material properties, processing, and performance. Since joining Exponent in 2012, Sellers has assisted a diverse array of clients in the petrochemical, chemical, natural gas utility, aerospace, microelectronics, and consumer products industries. She has been appointed as a testifying expert in international arbitrations as well as in United States legal proceedings. Sellers obtained her Ph.D. degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2011. She is a long-standing member of the Society of Women Engineers and the Association for Women in Science and has led numerous diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in industry and academia over the last 20 years.
Past Events
Thank you to all our alumni judges, graduate students, and Graduate Student Advisory Council members who have made this event possible over the years.
2024 Graduate Research Symposium
September 13, 2024
Judging Panel:
- Fikile R. Brushett (MS 09, PhD 10), Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Matt D. Langer (MS 06, PhD 11), Undergraduate Academic Advisor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Sarah L. Perry (PhD 10), Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Lela Manis, From Ab Initio Calculations to Population Balances for Polymer Upcycling
- 2nd Place: Lanie Leung, Development of an Efficient Nonempirical Tight Binding Theory
- 3rd Place: Vijay Shah, Impact of Feed Composition on Nanomembrane-Based CO2 Capture Performance
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Archana Verma, Assessing Molecular Doping Efficiency in Organic Semiconductors with Reactive Monte Carlo
- 2nd Place: Gunnar Thompson, Building a Granular Hydrogel Model for Bone Marrow
- 3rd Place: Wesley Harrison, Photoenzymatic Asymmetric Hydroamination for Chiral Alkyl Amine Synthesis
2023 Graduate Research Symposium
October 20, 2023
Judging Panel:
- Chi-Ting Huang (BS 91), Vice President of CMC and Process Development, Pheon Therapeutics
- Ty Johannes (MS 05, PhD 08), Rumley Chair of Chemical Engineering, University of Tulsa
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Devinda Wijewardena, Further Insights into Kinesin Motility Using MINFLUX: A Super-Resolution Nanoscopic Method (Kinesin Motility: Characterizing the Half-Steps and Backsteps)
- 2nd Place: Rachel Gaines, Glycerol Electrooxidation in Flow Reactors
- 3rd Place: Génesis Ríos Adorno, Printable and viable Gel-SH hydrogels for tendon-to-bone enthesis regeneration
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Victoria Kriuchkovskaia, Acquired temozolomide resistance instructs patterns of glioblastoma cell mobility, cytokine production, and response to continual drug exposure in gelatin hydrogels
- 2nd Place: Tianhao Yu, Enzyme function prediction using contrastive learning
- 3rd Place: Rui Hua Jeff Xu, Leveraging Automated High Throughput Experimentation for Benchmarking Machine Learning Algorithms for Understanding Quantum Dot synthesis
2022 Graduate Research Symposium
October 14, 2022
Judging Panel:
- Christopher Burcham (BS 91), Executive Director of Engineering, Eli Lilly and Company
- Ashlee N. Ford Versypt (MS 09, PhD 12), Associate Professor, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
- Dale Kyser (PhD 87) Retired; former VP Research and Nutrition Sciences, Mondelez International
- R. Mohan Sankaran, Donald Biggar Willett Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place (tie): Richa Ghosh, Mechanistic insight into flow electrochemical alkene epoxidation kinetics over gold
- 1st Place (tie): Jarom Sederholm, Single-step electrochemical recovery and regeneration of cathode materials
- Runner up (tie): Melanie Brunet, Depth correction of 3D NanoSIMS images show intracellular lipid and cholesterol distributions while capturing the effects of differential sputter rate
- Runner up (tie): Yash Laxman Kamble, Precision of architecture controlled bottlebrush polymer synthesis: A Monte Carlo analysis
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Susannah Miller, Novel encapsulated Pt catalyst
- 2nd Place: Meng Zhang, Z-mRNA as an effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2
- 3rd Place: Ryan Miller, Extending the bioavailability of hydrophilic antioxidants for metal ion detoxification via crystallization with polysaccharide dopamine
2021 Graduate Research Symposium
October 8, 2021
Judging Panel:
- Daniel Crowl (MS 73, PhD 75), Retired, Michigan Technical University
- Yongqi Lu (PhD 97), Research Chemical Engineer, Illinois State Geological Survey
- Qingjun Meng (PhD 04), Discipline Lead, Process Modeling and Simulations, BP
- Fei Wen (MS 06, PhD 10), Associate Professor, University of Michigan
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Chengyou Shi, Accelerating the Discovery of Novel Ribosomally Synthesized and Post-transitionally Modified Peptides (RiPPs) through Pathway Refactoring and Robotic Automation
- 2nd Place: Apurva Godbole, Raman Spectroscopy and Multivariate Analysis for Noninvasive Determination of Cell Phenotype in Hydrogel Cultures
- 3rd Place: Azzaya Khasbaatar, Tuning the Molecular Assembly Pathway for Morphology Control in Organic Solar Cells
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Danielle Harrier, Biodegradable latex: the development of an encapsulation technique for the ring-opening polymerization of cyclic esters
- 2nd Place: Whitney Sinclair, Lung-on-a-chip Platform that Enables in situ Imaging
- 3rd Place: Yu-Heng Deng, Self-Locomotive, Antimicrobial Microtorpedo (SLAM) for Biofilm Removal through Swarm-Activating Cavitation
2020 Graduate Research Symposium
Judging Panel:
Poster Presentation
- Dr. Lisa Hall, (PhD 09), Ohio State University
- Dr. Supreet Saini, (PhD 10), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
- Dr. Christian Junaedi, (PhD 06), Precision Combustion
- Dr. Jing Du, (PhD 12), AbbVie
Oral Presentation
- Dr. Jaeyun Sung, (PhD 12), Mayo Clinic
- Ms. Kit Gordon, (MS & MBA, 83), Tech Innovator and Watershed Protector
- Dr. Laird Forrest, (PhD 03), University of Kansas
- Dr. Allice Hollister, (PhD 10), Lam Research
- Dr. Efie Kokkoli, (PhD 98), Johns Hopkins University
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Vasiliki Kolliopoulos, Modifying mineralized collagen scaffolds to modulate the inflammatory response in craniomaxillofacial defects and enhance bone regeneration
- 2nd Place: Paola Baldaguez Medina, Electrochemically-mediated remediation of Perfluorinated Pollutants
- 3rd Place (tie): Jialing Caroline Li, Single Molecule Charge Transport in Redox-active Molecules
- 3rd Place (tie): Talha Al-Zoubi, Non-Precious Group Metal Oxygen Reduction Electrocatalysts of Single-Atom Clusters from Atomically Dispersed Precursors
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place (tie): Mai Ngo, Development of a Biomaterial Model of the Glioblastoma Perivascular Niche
- 1st Place (tie): Uzoma O. Nwabara, Towards Durable, Selective Cathodes for the Electroreduction of CO2 to Value-added Chemicals and Fuels
- 3rd Place (tie): Andrew N. Kuhn, Copper-based Nanomaterials for the Selective Reduction of Oxygen towards the Purification of Carbon Dioxide from Flue Gas
- 3rd Place (tie): Charles Young, Coupled effects of concentration, chain architecture, and flow on polymer solution dynamics and rheology
2019 Graduate Research Symposium
October 19, 2019
Judging Panel:
- Ryan Stephens (PhD 08)
- Marc Viera (PhD 02)
- Ritika Mohan (PhD 14)
- Wenjuan Zha (PhD 07)
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Liliana Bello, The Structure and Dynamics of Redox Active Polymers for Flow Battery Applications
- 2nd Place: Prapti Kafle, Dynamic-template-directed crystallization of 2D conjugated polymer thin films and their distinct electronic properties
- 3rd Place: Matthew Chan, The Substrate Import Mechanism of the Human Serotonin Transporter
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Bijal Patel, Nonequilibrium Assembly of Bottlebrush Block Copolymers for Tunable Nanoscale Morphology and Photonic Properties through 3D Solution Printing
- 2nd Place: Jiangyan Feng, Role of substrate recognition in modulating strigolactone receptor selectivity
- 3rd Place: Kartik Kamat, Diabat Method for Polymorph Free-Energy Differences
2018 Graduate Research Symposium
October 15, 2018
Judging Panel:
- Robert Ferguson (BS 91), Senior Upstream Marketing Manager, Medtronic’s Heart Valve Therapies
- Dr. Lili Deligianni (PhD 88), Retired; former Research Scientist, IBM
- Dr. Lon Chubiz (PhD 10), Assistant Professor of Biology, University of Missouri-St. Louis
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Jiangyan Feng, Characterizing Protein Conformational Dynamics Using Evolutionary Couplings
- 2nd Place: Whitney Sinclair, Lung-on-a-chip enables dynamic imaging of pulmonary lung tissue in response to aerosolized nanoparticle
- 3rd Place: Jason Adams, Mechanistic Insights into the Direct Synthesis of H202: How Solvents Facilitate Proton-Electron Transfer
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Emily Chen, The Effect of Extracellular Hyaluronic Acid and Hypoxia on Glioblastoma Stem Cell Invasiveness
- 2nd Place: William Ballance, Active Skin: Eliminating Biofilms Through Drug Release and Mechanical Vibration
- 3rd Place: Prapti Kafle, Solution Coating of Pharmaceutical Nanothin Films and Multilayer Nanocomposites with Controlled Morphology and Polymorphism
2017 Graduate Research Symposium
October 31, 2017
Judging Panel:
- Dr. Qingjun Meng (PhD 04), Simulation Team Lead, Refining Technology and Engineering, BP
- Dr. Meredith Sellers (PhD 10), Managing Engineer, Materials and Corrosion Engineering Practice, Exponent, Inc.
- Dr. Josh Tice (PhD 07), Product Development Engineer, R&D Division, Scientific Device Laboratory
- Dr. Gregory Underhill, Assistant Professor, Bioengineering, University of Illinois
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Charles Young, The Rheology of Semidilute Polymer Solutions
- 2nd Place: Pei-Chieh Shih, Iridium-based Pyrochlores for Efficient Oxygen Evolution Reaction in Acid
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Dylan Walsh, Topology Control of Bottlebrush Polymers
- 2nd Place: Saurabh Shukla, How Multiple Molecular Motors Transport Cargo in Cells
- 3rd Place: Thao Ngo, Studying the Durability of Pt-based Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Reduction Reaction Using in situ X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy
2016 Graduate Research Symposium
October 28, 2016
Judging Panel:
- Dr. Cory Berkland (PhD 03), Distinguished Professor, University of Kansas
- Dr. John Gohndrone (PhD 88), Process Engineering Specialist, Dow Corning Corporation
- Dr. Khushnuma Koita (PhD 12), Development Specialist, Praxair
- Dr. Matthew Liberatore (PhD 03), Associate Professor, University of Toledo
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Arkaprava Dan, Breathe In, Breath Out: Lung Endothelial Monolayers Respond to Cyclic Stretch
- 2nd Place: Ge Qu, Understanding Interfacial Alignment of Solution Coated Conjugated Polymers
- 3rd Place: Hyunjoong (Tim) Chung, Molecular Cooperativity in Single-Crystal-to-Single-Crystal Polymorphic Transitions of an Organic Semiconductor
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Daniel Bregante, Understanding Olefin Epoxidation with H202 in Transition-Metal Substituted Zeolites
- 2nd Place: Kai-Wen Hsiao, Microfluidic-based Direct Measurement of Normal Stress in Semi-Dilute Polymer Solutions
- 3rd Place: Emily Chen, Biomaterial Models of Cancer: Invasion and Cancer Stem Cells
2015 Graduate Research Symposium
October 23, 2015
Judging Panel:
- Dr. Josh Gray (PhD 04), Program Manager, Surface and Analytics Lab, Boeing
- Dr. Ibrahim Sendijarevic (PhD 02), Business Development Manager, Troy Polymers
- Dr. Anastasia Vaia (PhD 03), PTA Process Optimization Manager, BP
- Dr. Yongbo Yuan (former Illinois ChBE postdoc), Scientist III, ADM
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Katelyn Dahlke, Kinetics of DNA-binding Dimeric Proteins
- 2nd Place: Andy Chang, Deconvoluting the Effects of Solvation and Acid Strength on Zeolite Catalysis: Model Systems for Complex Materials
- 3rd Place (tie): Sumit Verma, Electrochemical Reduction of CO2 to Value Added C1-C2 Chemicals and Fuels
- 3rd Place (tie): Kai-Chieh Tsao, Continuous Production of Uniform Carbon-Supported Catalysts of Metal Nanocubes and Nanooctahedra Using Carbon Monoxide-Mediated Processes
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Danielle Mai, Single Molecule Dynamics of Branched DNA Polymers
- 2nd Place: Ran Chao, Building “iBioFAB” for automated synthetic biology
- 3rd Place: Neil Wilson, Mechanism and Factors that Determine Selectivity for H202 Formation on Pd and AuPd clusters via Direct Synthesis
2014 Graduate Research Symposium
October 24, 2014
Judging Panel:
- Dr. Amit Kulkarni (PhD 01), GE
- Dr. Rahul Keswani (PhD 12), University of Michigan
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Joe Whittenberg, Microreactors for click chemistry-based synthesis of molecular imaging probes
- 2nd Place: Ankur Taneja, Unified approach for function based geologic modeling, simulation reservoir and production history matching
- 3rd Place: Yelena Ilin, Identifying the differentiation and cell cycle state of hematopoietic stem cells using Raman Spectroscopy
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place (tie): Vivek Kumar, Development of high-throughput reactors for continuous synthesis of semiconductor nanoparticles
- 1st Place (tie): Tong Si, Enabling multiplex genome engineering in yeast by RNAi and CRISPR
- 3rd Place: Ming Li, Control of point defect behavior in metal oxides via surface band bending
2013 Graduate Research Symposium
October 25, 2013
Judging Panel:
- Josh Ramsey (PhD 06), Professor, Oklahoma State University
- Subramanian Ramakrishnan (PhD 01) Professor, Florida A&M University/Florida State University
- Dr. Tim Drews (PhD 04), OSIsoft, LLC.
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place (tie): Todd Freestone, Metabolic Engineering for increased production of the anti-malarial FR900098
- 1st Place (tie): Danielle Mai, Flexible Branched Polymers for Single Molecule Rheology
- 3rd Place: Eitan Barlaz, Challenges in Defect Engineering of Undoped Titanium Dioxide
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Cartney Smith, A Bio-inspired Assembly Strategy for Formulation of Enhanced MRI Diagnostic Probes
- 2nd Place: Utsav Agrawal, Super-resolution Imaging of the Bacterial Chemotaxis System in Bacillus subtilis
- 3rd Place: Vahid Mirshafiee, Protein Corona Significantly Reduces Active Targeting Yield
2012 Graduate Research Symposium
October 26, 2012
Judging Panel:
- Eric Hukkanen (PhD 04), The Dow Chemical Company
- Eric Choban (PhD 04), DuPont
- Mohan Karulkar (PhD 07), Ford Motor Company
- Neel Varde (PhD 04), Roquette
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Ritika Mohan, A Combinatorial Microfluidic Approach for Point-of-Care Applications
- 2nd Place: Sudipto Guha, X-ray Compatible Microfluidic Platforms for Screening, Crystallization and Structure Determination of Proteins
- 3rd Place: Molly Jhong, Catalyst and Electrode Design for CO2 Electrolysis to Value-added Products
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Yunzi Luo, Apply a Synthetic Biology Approach to Demystify the Target Cryptic Pathway for Novel Natural Product Discovery
- 2nd Place: Maryam Sayyah, Composite Metal Oxide Materials Synthesized by Ultrasonic Spray Pyrolysis for CO2 Capture
- 3rd Place: Sachit Goyal, Solvent Compatible Microfluidic Platforms for Solid Form Screening of Pharmaceutical Parent Compounds
2011 Graduate Research Symposium
October 7, 2011
Judging Panel:
- Ahmad Hilaly, Archer Daniel Midland Company
- Brian Anderson, Abbott Laboratories
- Abdelqader Zamamiri, Abbott Laboratories
- Dennis Guthrie, Dow Chemical Company
Poster Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Matthew Naughton, Effects of Hydrophobicity and Catalyst Binder on Alkaline Fuel Cell Electrode Performance
- 2nd Place: Steven Caliari, The Effect of Scaffold Microstructure and Soluble Factor Presentation on Cell Bioactivity for Tendon Tissue Engineering
- 3rd Place: Ross DeVolder, Directed Blood Vessel Growth Using an Angiogenic Microfiber/Microparticle Composite Patch
Oral Presentation Winners:
- 1st Place: Ryan Cobb, Characterization and Directed Evolution of FrbF for Combinatorial Biosynthesis of Novel FR-900098 Derivatives
- 2nd Place: Sachit Goyal, Microfluidic Platform for Evaporation-Based Solid Form Screening of Pharmaceutical Compounds
- 3rd Place: Bhushan Mahadik, Multigradient Hydrogels to Decode Extrinsic Regulation of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Fate