2023 Undergraduate Research Symposium
The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering held the 2023 Undergraduate Scholarship and Awards Ceremony on April 14, 2023, at the Illini Union Ballroom. The annual event honors the department's scholarship recipients and donors and recognizes the judges, participants, and winners of the Undergraduate Research Symposium held earlier that day. Christopher Rao, hosted this event as the new department head along with Gunsalus Scholar Associate Professor Simon Rogers and Reid T. Milner Professor Deborah Leckband.
Megan Shamsi (advised by professor Brendan Harley) won first place, with her project "Developing an Injury Model for Bone Regeneration". Yourong Weng (advised by Jefferson Chan) won second place with the poster titled "Hydrolysis-Resistant Ester-Based Linkers for Development of Activity-Based NIR Bioluminescence Probes". In third place was Achal Anand (advised by Sara Pedron Haba) for the project "Environment-mediated Tumor Progression in Bioengineering Model of Glioblastoma".
Congratulations to the winners!
2023 Judging Panel
Jim Grant earned his BS in ChE in 1969 from the University of Illinois. He also earned a masters in ChE from Washington University, and he holds master’s degrees in Engineering Management and Chemistry. During his career he has been involved in maintenance and production management; process development, design, and plant construction; environmental compliance, and environmental remediation projects. And, most recently he was Hazardous Materials Manager for TSA in Washington DC
Kenneth Jaconetty earned his BS in ChE in 1982 from the University of Illinois. He is an Intellectual Property attorney and formerly was senior director and associate general counsel, IP legal lead for IP Transactions at Astellas Pharma U.S. Previously, he has served as assistant general counsel for IP at Takeda Pharmaceuticals and senior counsel at Baxter Healthcare Corporation, and in numerous other roles as a patent and intellectual property attorney. He earned his JD at George Washington University Law School.
Mike Swift earned his BS in ChE in 1991 from the University of Illinois. He is a Regional Engineering Manager at BSI Engineering, Inc which specializes in consulting and process design for clients in chemical, pharmaceutical, renewable fuel, food & beverage, and consumer products industries. During his career, Mike has also held other manufacturing and process engineering positions at 3M Company, Ambitech Engineering, Rohm and Haas, and Sun Chemical.
Thank you and congratulations to all of the 2023 Undergraduate Research Symposium Participants:
2023 Symposium Participants
| Presenter | Poster Title | Advisor |
| Melisande Wong Yan Ling | "Fabrication of Mineralized Collagen Scaffold-Based 3D High Throughput Screening (HTS) Array" | Professor Brendan Harley |
| Megan Shamsi | "Developing an Injury Model for Bone Regeneration" | Professor Brendan Harley |
| Jaehong Park | "Characterizing Battery Interface Resistance using Direct Current Electrochemical Impedance Spectrometry (DCEIS)" | Professor Paul Braun |
| Achal Anand | "Environment-mediated Tumor Progression in Bioengineering Model of Glioblastoma" | Professor Sara Pedron Haba |
| Vincent (Yujie) Yang | "Defect-Controlled Synthesis of Advanced Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Evolution Reaction" | Professor Hong Yang |
| Yourong Weng | "Hydrolysis-Resistant Ester-Based Linkers for Development of Activity-Based NIR Bioluminescence Probes" | Professor Jefferson Chan |
| David (Tae Yeun) Yang | "Synthesis of Polymer Networks with Programmable Mechanical Properties Through Molecular Weight Distribution Control" | Professor Damien Guironnet |
| Max Kim | "Elucidating the mechanisms of Cyclopamine binding to Smoothened Protein using Molecular Dynamics and Machine Learning" | Professor Diwakar Shukla |