2023 News Archive
New Hajim School Promo Video
Chemical engineering student Jane Agwara appears in a promotional video for the Hajim School.
Jane Agwara Featured in Hajim Promo
Advocation for Biodiverse Emojies
Associate Professor Andrew White from the Department of Chemical Engineering recently weighed in on an interesting look at adding biodiversity to Bitmoji by Los Angeles Times. Ecologists are calling for adding more flora and fauna to Emojipedia, the global directory of pictograms recognized by the international Unicode Standard, in order to help spur global conversations about the natural world.
Faculty Member is Helping Former Google CEO
One of our faculty members is helping form Google CEO Eric Schmidt launch an ambitious new nonprofit aiming to shake up the future of scientific research. Associate Professor Andrew White White from the Department of Chemical Engineering is currently on academic leave serving as head of science for Future House, which is featured in a new Bloomberg profile.
Undergrads Win Big at AIChE Poster Competition
Yiwen Sun, Phyllis Ong and Adel Fadhul won awards at the 2023 AIChE annual student conference in Orlando, Florida.
Riley Prewett Wins the Wells Prize
The Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences is recognizing three undergraduate students with the Robert L. Wells Prize, awarded annually to high-achieving seniors who also excel in a humanities field, as determined by the highest GPAs at the end of their junior year.
Alumni News
The phrase “family first” means a lot to Abby Zabrodsky ’14, ’19S (MBA). After nine years working at a large consumer products company in Buffalo, NY, she joined Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Inc. as its director of business development. In 1989, Abby’s father, John Zabrodsky ’82 founded the firm, an engineering and manufacturing systems company that employs about 20 people, including Abby’s mother, Kristy, who has been the company’s chief financial officer since 2013.
ChemE Faculty Promoted
The department of Chemical Engineering is happy to announce that David G. Foster, currently associate professor of instruction has been promoted to professor of instruction.
The Department of Chemical Engineering is pleased to announce Conor McNamara as the 2023 Young Alumni Award winner
Conor works as the Director of Beyond Beer Operations for Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, MO. He leads a cross-functional supply chain team responsible for the production planning and execution of AB's Beyond Beer Portfolio, with a focus on Flavored Malt and Wine-Based products. Conor joined AB immediately after graduating from Rochester and has worked his way through a variety of roles in brewery operations, corporate planning, and supply chain innovations. Conor received his bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rochester in 2013 and, in 2014, participated in Rochester's e5 Program (formerly known as KEY) where he worked on developing a product line of zero-waste soap.
Scientists take another step in the quest to combat antibiotic resistance
Scientists have found a counterintuitive wrinkle in the way bacteria spread antibiotic-resistant genes through small circular pieces of DNA called plasmids.
Large language models could be the catalyst for a new era of chemistry
Large language models like the one behind the popular ChatGPT could transform the future of chemistry, according to a researcher at the Uuniversity of Rochester. Andrew D. White, an associate professor of chemical engineering, outlines why he believes large language models (LLMs) represent the future of the field in an article published by Nature Reviews Chemistry.
ChemE Student Receives a Fulbright Grant
Danielle Getz received a Fulbright U.S Student Grant to head to the University of Copenhagen's Center forHigh Entropy Alloy Catalysis in Denmark. She will pursue graduate coursework in chemistry and research on high-entroy alloy catalysts to investigate renewable chemical production pathways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
2023 Outstanding MS Prize
Kendra Watson (Müller Group) received the 2023 Outstanding MS in Chemical Engineering Prize for her dissertation "Oxygen Reduction to Hydrogen Peroxide Catalyzed by Hydrophilic Carbon Fiber Paper Cathodes”.
GPT-4 Is Here
Andrew White, a chemical engineer at the University of Rochester, New York, has had privileged access to GPT-4 as a ‘red-teamer’: a person paid by OpenAI to test the platform to try and make it do something bad.
Engineers Without Borders
Six Hajim Students who are members of the Engineers Without Borders student chapter were in Don Juan, Dominican Republic, during January break. They were making adjustments to a water purification system the EWB chapter installed for an elementary school during previous trips.
Advocacy and Action Award Winner, Astrid Mueller
This award recognizes staff, postdoctoral fellows, or faculty who exemplify excellence in developing and sustaining an infrastructure to support equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Alumni News
Chemical engineer alumna Amanda Tatem '20 is a great example of a student who made the most of her opportunities at our University. Now she's a chemical engineer on Eastern Research Group's facilities and process engineering team, analyzing operations, systems and equipmentt used by federal clients including the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The promise of batteries that come from trees
Wyatt Tenhaeff, an associate professor of chemical engineering, has also made lignin-derived anodes in laboratory settings. Lignin is “really cool,” he says because it is a byproduct that could have many potential uses. In experiments, he and his colleagues found that they could use the lignin to make an anode with a self-supporting structure, which didn't require glue or a copper-based current collector—a common component in lithium-ion batteries. Despite the fact that this could reduce the cost of lignin-derived carbon anodes, he is skeptical that they can compete commercially with graphite anodes. “I just don’t think it’s going to be a big enough step-change in terms of cost or performance to replace the entrenched graphite,” he says.