The Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering is pleased to announce the appointment of Elizabeth Bickel Rogers as an assistant professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering. Bickel Rogers joined the faculty on November 16, 2025.
Bickel Rogers earned her bachelor’s degree with distinction in chemical engineering from Tennessee Tech University in 2017 and completed her Ph.D. at Purdue University in 2022 under the supervision of professor Rajamani Gounder. Her doctoral research focused on the synthesis of zeolite materials with well-defined properties and their application as catalysts for upgrading light alkenes.
From 2023 to 2025, she served as a postdoctoral scholar in professor Aditya Bhan’s research group at the University of Minnesota, where she investigated low-temperature CO₂ and CO hydrogenation over transition metal carbide catalysts.
At Illinois, Bickel Rogers’ research group will focus on designing new catalytic materials and developing innovative reaction strategies for producing fuels and chemicals from diverse carbon feedstocks, including waste and natural resources. Her approach integrates synthesis of new and well-defined catalytic materials with characterization and kinetic studies to discern reaction pathways and mechanisms, and their connections to reaction conditions and catalyst properties, in order to enable judicious design of energy-efficient, applied catalytic processes.
In addition to her research, Bickel Rogers will begin teaching CHBE 424 Undergraduate Chemical Reaction Engineering during the Spring 2026 semester, with other courses to follow.
“I am very excited to mentor the outstanding graduate and undergraduate students at U. of I. in the lab and in the classroom,” Bickel Rogers said. “I’m also very excited for the opportunity to realize my own research ideas, and to build a world-class research lab and new research group from the ground up. I look forward to contributing to the culture of scholarship at Illinois through my research and teaching.”