The Department of Chemical Engineering is committed to fostering a dynamic and welcoming academic environment where all students are empowered to excel.
Our commitment to engagement and enrichment extends across the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences and into the Rochester community through early, meaningful participation in research, small-group mentoring, and a belief that learning happens in teams, labs, startups, and neighborhoods.
Engagement is year-round. Below are a few examples of how the Department of Chemical Engineering works to engage with the greater Rochester community.
Enrichment is equally intentional and publicly visible. We embed professional formation through workshops in scientific communication, ethics, entrepreneurship, and inclusive leadership, structured alumni mentoring and mock interviews, and clear on-ramps to funded research, global experiences, and community partnerships.
Below are a few examples of ways the Department of Chemical Engineering works to enrich communities at the University, in the greater Rochester area, and across the globe.
“Molecular Podcasting” is Professor Darren Lipomi’s long-running series about life and work in STEM, aimed at students, postdocs, and faculty who want frank, practical advice. Episodes dig into the hidden curriculum of academia: scientific writing, presenting, mentoring, mental health, impostor feelings, networking for introverts, peer review, promotion and tenure, and how to build humane lab culture.
The podcast is distributed on Apple and Spotify, and framed by Lipomi’s experience as a research-active professor and department chair, which gives the show a grounded, insider perspective.
On YouTube, Professor Lipomi features longform talks and shorter riffs on study techniques, scholarly writing, running a lab, and career strategies for scientists. Representative videos cover “how I run my lab,” “scientific publishing and peer review,” and “how to study in STEM,” alongside creator-centric pieces on building an academic YouTube presence. The channel functions as a living library for professional development that most departments don’t formally teach, and his move to the University of Rochester as chemical engineering chair broadens the focus to leadership and field-level communication.
PodCAT is a conversation-driven podcast focused on academic heterogeneous catalysis, hosted by professors Marc Porosoff (University of Rochester), Ezra Clark (Penn State University), and Tom Senftle (Rice University). The ethos is a “one-stop shop” for academic catalysis.
Episodes alternate between interviews with leading researchers and practical guidance for early-career scientists on topics like writing research statements, assembling a faculty application, starting a lab, and teaching while ramping up a research program. The blend of scientific depth and career advice makes the show unusual in a literature-dense discipline where norms and expectations often live off the record.
MAthematical Gene Circuits (MAGiC) is an educational and research toolkit developed by Professor Allison Lopatkin’s laboratory that couples a physical “CellBoard” of gene-circuit components with companion software that reads the layout and generates ordinary differential equation (ODE) models. The audience spans K-12 through graduate students, which includes hands-on visualization for younger learners, parameterized ODE manipulation for college courses, and simulation of biochemical processes for research labs.
PlasAnn is a plasmid-annotation toolkit from the Lopatkin Lab that streamlines the messy, error-prone parts of parsing circular DNA. It auto-downloads required databases, supports batch processing for entire folders, and exports both human-readable tables and publication-ready circular plasmid maps alongside annotated GenBank files. In practice, that means you can point PlasAnn at a directory of plasmids and walk away with standardized feature tables, figures, and versioned files you can drop into analysis pipelines or manuscripts.
If you’d like to learn more about engagement and enrichment in the Department of Chemical Engineering, please reach out to us.