News, Events & CEMS Seminars

DEPARTMENT EVENTS
SPRING 2022 CEMS SEMINAR SCHEDULE
JANUARY & FEBRUARY
Thursday, January 20: Dr. Kumar Varoon Agrawal, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. ZOOM seminar.
During the months of January and February, CEMS will hold numerous faculty candidate seminars. To protect the confidentiality of the search process, the details of those seminars will not be posted on the CEMS website.
MARCH
Tuesday, March 1: Dr. Rufina Alamo, Florida A&M University-Florida State University
Thursday, March 3: faculty candidate seminar
March 7-11: UMN Spring Break, no seminars
March 14-18: APS meeting in Chicago, no seminars
March 20-24: ACS meeting in San Diego, no seminars
Tuesday, March 29: Dr. Chinedum Osuji, University of Pennsylvania
APRIL
Tuesday, April 5: Dr. Christian Pester, Pennsylvania State University
Tuesday, April 19: Dr. Hang Lu, Georgia Institute of Technology
Thursday, April 21: Dr. Srinivas Rangarajan, Lehigh University
Tuesday, April 26: Dr. Ofer Manor, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
CEMS NEWSLETTER
Past Issues
DEPARTMENT NEWS

Michelle Calabrese wins NSF CAREER Award
Posted January 11, 2022
Jan. 11, 2022 - Assistant Professor Michelle Calabrese has been selected for a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support her project “Beyond alignment: novel mechanisms for controlling block copolymer phase behavior using magnetic fields.

CEMS graduate student Marisa Bazzi awarded AHA Predoctoral Fellowship
Posted January 4, 2022
Jan. 5, 2022 -Marisa Bazzi, a fourth-year materials science and engineering graduate student in Professor Victor Barocas' group, was recently awarded a prestigious Predoctoral Fellowship from the American Heart Association (AHA) to support her research, "Multiscale, Multiphysical Phenomena in Arterial Remodeling."

Associate Professor Vivian Ferry appointed to the Editorial Board of PRX Energy
Posted December 21, 2021
Dec. 22, 2021 - Associate Professor Vivian Ferry is a member of the 13-person inaugural Editorial Board of the journal, PRX Energy and will serve on the Board for a three year term. The American Physical Society (APS) launched this highly selective, fully open access journal with aims to provide a high-impact forum for the interdisciplinary community focused on energy research and technologies.

UMN start-up based on Professor Bob Tranquillo's research closes $10 million Series A financing
Posted December 21, 2021
Dec. 21, 2021 - Vascudyne’s proprietary TRUE Tissue technology was developed by Professor Robert Tranquillo— a Distinguished McKnight University Professor with the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota—and researchers in his lab.

CEMS graduate students honored as Caretta Outstanding Unit Operations Teaching Assistants
Posted December 21, 2021
Dec. 21, 2021 - CEMS graduate students Isaac Mastalski, Pranati Mondkar, and Christopher Neal were recently honored by Professor Raul Caretta as Caretta Outstanding Unit Operations Teaching Assistants (TA’s) for fall semester 2021. The three winners received a cash award and all teaching assistants for the course including Logan Case, Joe Esposito, Seongjoo Jung, Maya Ramamurthy, and Mayank Tanwar received a UMN jacket and were honored at a small recognition event.

Cheng group research paper featured on the cover of Soft Matter
Posted December 15, 2021
Dec. 15, 2021 - A research paper from Associate Professor Xiang Cheng’s group has been featured on the front cover of Soft Matter published online today, December 15, 2021. The work studied the dynamics of the collective swimming of bacteria, which displays intriguing patterns reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh's famous painting The Starry Night (1889).

Professor Cari Dutcher wins SERDP 2021 Project of the Year
Posted December 10, 2021
Dec. 10, 2021 - Cari Dutcher, Associate Professor in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, has been awarded a Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) 2021 Project of the Year for her work, "WP 18-1031: Understanding Shipboard Oil/Water Emulsions Using Macro- and Micro-scale Flows" for Weapons Systems and Platforms.

K. Andre Mkhoyan From soccer balls to atomic-scale structures
Posted December 1, 2021
Dec. 1, 2021 - There are special rooms for the instruments that K. Andre Mkhoyan uses. The walls are padded to dampen acoustic vibrations, the air is cooled so temperatures never vary more than one to two degrees, and the floors are concrete to lessen any sudden human movements or unexpected seismic activity.

Chemical researchers invent bio-petroleum for sustainable materials
Posted November 23, 2021
Nov. 23, 2021 - A team of researchers from the U.S. National Science Foundation Center for Sustainable Polymers based at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have developed a chemical technology of combined fermentation and chemical refining that can produce petroleum-like liquids from renewable plants.

Dr. Raisa C. A. Ela, Postdoctoral Associate in CEMS & CSP, named a 2021 MIT ChemE Rising Star
Posted November 12, 2021
November 12, 2021 - Dr. Raisa C. A. Ela, a Postdoctoral Associate in CEMS and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Sustainable Polymers (CSP) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, was selected as a 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Chemical Engineering Rising Star.