Michigan Chemical Engineering

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Michigan Chemical Engineering

Engineering matter to change the world.

05/29/2026

Last week we celebrated ChE Department Chair Delia Milliron for her formal installation as the James and Judith Street Professor of Chemical Engineering!

This professorship recognizes Milliron’s exceptional innovations in the field, her dedication to mentorship, and her phenomenal leadership.

The event included a talk from Delia titled, “Making materials from colloidal nanocrystals,” and included kind words from Associate Dean for Graduate and Professional Education Krista Rule Wigginton, Dr. Gary Ong, and Professors Nicholas A. Kotov, Sunitha Nagrath and Thomas Truskett.

Delia Milliron’s group researches nocrystal-based materials, with emphasis on energy-saving electrochromic windows and clean energy technologies. Her work has pioneered the intersection of nanoscience, materials chemistry, and energy technology leading to key advances in the synthesis and application of tunable metal oxide nanocrystals.

Congratulations, Delia!

05/28/2026

🥳Congratulations to ChE PhD candidates Joseph Olaide and Hridoy Roy for passing their 2026 Doctoral Candidacy Exams (DCE) with distinction last week. 👏👏👏

This honor is reserved for the very best students across academics and research in their first-year class.

Olaide’s research focuses on understanding and modeling the structural complexity of complex materials using computational methods like graph theory and machine learning. (Nicholas A. Kotov’s Lab)

Roy’s research focuses on understanding the role of ion-exchange membranes in coupled electrochemical systems for nitrate reduction and organic oxidation. (Nirala Singh and Jovan Kamcev’s Lab)

05/19/2026

Congratulations and good luck to all of our first year PhD students who are taking their Doctoral Candidacy Exams today! We’re so proud of all the work you’ve put in to achieve this milestone♥️🫶

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Pictured: Joseph Olaide, Roger Chang (back), Aditya Pradhan, Sean Robinson (back), Yuhan Hu, Joseph Quinlan, Jocelyn Phung, Sila Donmez.

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05/14/2026

Mentally, we’re still here.

Congrats again, Class of 2026! 🫶💙

Miss you already 😔

05/13/2026

Congratulations to eight students affiliated with Michigan Chemical Engineering as recipients of fellowships through the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP)!

The program supports outstanding graduate students pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. It aims to help ensure the quality, vitality and diversity of the U.S. scientific and engineering workforce while broadening participation across the full spectrum of talent in STEM.

PhD students include:
David Amirsadri, Zachary Hart, Jocelyn Phung, Benjamin William Schwartz, Abigail Spangler, Kartik Kher and Sean Robinson

Undergraduate students include:
Andrew Timothy Philippart
*Andrew will join Michigan ChE this fall.

05/04/2026

ChE Class of 2026!! We’re so proud of you :’)

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DM or email us your pics from graduation, we want to celebrate you!!

04/22/2026

Thank you to JC Penney for being there for the class of 2026 when Aspen couldn’t be.

04/21/2026

Last week the 2026 Undergraduate Symposium brought together students, faculty, staff and alumni to provide a venue for exceptional undergraduate research projects from students’ work in faculty labs and process and product design courses.

This year, thanks to Warren (PhD ‘66) and Diane Seider, students were not only awarded for individual posters, but also, two additional honorary awards recognized the top product and process design teams via the Warren and Diane Seider Chemical Engineering Product Design Award and the Warren and Diane Seider Chemical Engineering Process Design Award.

The symposium saw 220+ attendees, marking it as one of the largest held by Michigan Chemical Engineering (U-M ChE). All 37 posters presented by ChE undergrads highlighted the excellence of research and design performed by students.

Congratulations to the following students on their awards:

Warren and Diane Seider Product Design Award:
Sand Guard: Preventative Anti-Sand Spray by Osvaldo Almanza, Lily Dalsin, Sydney Gratopp, Jiwoo Kim

Warren and Diane Seider Process Design Award:
Ibuprofen API: Ibuprofiting Co. by Ethan Binns, Yassin Elmeligi, Kedar Padalkar, Vikas Sabnis

Research Poster Awards:
FIRST PLACE: Chiral Semiconductor Materials with Near-Infrared Circularly Polarized Light Emission by Vinh-Điển Lê

SECOND PLACE (tie): Influence of Ion Softness on Mixed-Salt Sorption in Ion-Exchange Membranes by Nethra Yandooru

SECOND PLACE (tie): In Vitro Performance of a Microfluidic Artificial Lung with Biomimetic Branching Networks by Archit Vig

04/14/2026

Proud moment for the Michigan ChE community! ChE Professor Jovan Kamcev and former PhD student David Kitto (PhD ’24) are the recipients of the Global Outstanding Mentor and Global Outstanding Graduate Student Award from the American Chemical Society Division of Polymer Materials Science and Engineering (PMSE).

Kitto’s thesis focused on fundamental understanding of ion transport in charged polymer membranes and development of membranes with ultrahigh charge densities, resulting in 8 first-author publications in prestigious journals such as Nature Chemical Engineering and Science Advances.

Now, Kitto is conducting postdoctoral research at Argonne National Laboratory.

This joint recognition underscores the impact of mentorship and teamwork in advancing next-generation membrane technologies. Congrats!

04/10/2026

“There are a lot of diseases where a protein is missing or dysfunctional due to a single mutation, and we can definitely correct for that by introducing a new gene.”

ChE Professor Joerg Lahann, ChE PhD student Fjorela Xhyliu and researchers from Michigan Medicine used nanoparticles to modify human liver cancer, kidney and immune cells. By making them glow green from genes for green fluorescent protein, the cells activated the new genes after they engulfed and digested the nanoparticles, releasing the DNA or messenger RNA packed inside.

Insights gained could pave the way for nanoparticles that enable gene therapies for cancer and genetic disease that don’t use modified viruses.

03/30/2026

Hi everyone!! My name is Meleni Sarantos and I am a 2nd year ChE candidate here at UMich. This week I will be taking over the Instagram and showcasing some of my life as a PhD student!

A little about me: I did my undergrad at RIT where I got my bachelors in chemical engineering and my masters in materials science and engineering. I do research in the Shea lab in the BME department on metabolic engineering of stem cell beta cells for treatment of Type I diabetes. I am also this year’s ChE Graduate Society (ChEGS) President and love being involved with the ChE department in any way I can! In my free time you can find me helping out at the Health System Children’s Center, watching hockey, signing karaoke at Circ, or spending time with my wonderful friends :) I hope you enjoy this week’s glimpse into my PhD life!

Address

2300 Hayward Street
Ann Arbor, MI
48106

Telephone

+17347642383

Website

http://che.engin.umich.edu/

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