Michigan Chemical Engineering

MORE graduation pics!!! We love you Class of 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!

🥳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)

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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Mentally, we’re still here.

Congrats again, Class of 2026! 🫶💙

Miss you already 😔

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.

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!!

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

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

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!