Chair's message

Spring 2025

Dear Alumni, Colleagues, and Friends:

I hope that this letter finds you and your families well. As we look back on 2024, I am pleased to reflect on an extraordinary year of achievements in our department.  

I am delighted to share that James (Jim) Van Deventer was promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure. Jim’s research on protein engineering using yeast display and amino acids beyond the regular twenty found in native proteins shows great promise for the development of antibodies against a range of diseases. I am also happy to note that Jim is the recipient of the prestigious CAREER award by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and Jim’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) R35 MIRA award was renewed last summer.

Professor Milo Koretsky and colleagues across Engineering and Arts and Sciences recently received a $3.6 million NSF Growing Convergence Research grant to explore ambiguity, uncertainty and confusion in STEM education. Milo is a frontrunner in engineering education research leading a multi-disciplinary group engaging in developing novel learning approaches and assessing their impact utilizing qualitative and quantitative methods.

Working with faculty members from Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), and the Friedman School of Nutrition, Professor Matthew (Matt) Panzer and Professor Sameer Sonkusale (ECE Professor with a secondary appointment in ChBE) were recently awarded a $1.7 million grant by the National Institutes of Health to design wearable technology to monitor various biosignals and process them for estimation of cognitive and mobility decline over time. Ultimately the project goal is to develop low-cost, user-friendly solutions to support older adults with healthy aging and prevention of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. 

You can read more about other prestigious faculty accomplishments throughout the 2025 newsletter.

I am also excited to report that last summer, the department received official notice of accreditation by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) for the next six years. This followed a visit in the fall of 2023 by ABET evaluators who reviewed our program and facilities. Once more, I would like to express my deep appreciation for all the ChBE faculty, staff, and advisory board members for their efforts supporting and continuously improving our curricular activities to better serve the ever-changing educational needs of our students.

This is an ideal opportunity to thank our many donors for their support. On behalf of the department, I express our gratitude to the family of the late Professor Nakho Sung, who was a long time ChBE faculty member. Through their generous donation, the department is establishing a travel award to support ChBE PhD students carrying out cutting-edge research in materials science. This will also be the first year that the Christos Georgakis Award for Best Senior Honors Thesis will be bestowed, recognizing the many contributions of Professor Emeritus Georgakis to our department. We invite you to read more about these awards and other ChBE student highlights in this newsletter.

As always, we welcome the participation, support and ideas of our alumni and friends toward shaping the department’s future.

With warm wishes for a happy and productive year,

Kind regards,

Emmanuel Tzanakakis
Professor and Chair