Michigan Chemical Engineering

Could a flu vaccine someday offer broader, longer-lasting protection?

An encouraging step towards this future, Professor Fei Wen has successfully protected mice against three different strains of flu by combining nanoparticle engineering with an innovative yeast-based manufacturing method.

“Our method could improve pandemic response time.”

🔗 Read the full article at the link in our bio.

Could a flu vaccine someday offer broader, longer-lasting protection?

An encouraging step towards this future, Professor Fei Wen has successfully protected mice against three different strains of flu by combining nanoparticle engineering with an innovative yeast-based manufacturing method.

“Our method could improve pandemic response time.”

🔗 Read the full article at the link in our bio.

Vaccine particles loaded with influenza M2 proteins, which are highlighted with black dots. This flu marker mutates more slowly, potentially enabling the vaccine to provide longer immunity.

Image: Trang Hoang, Wen Lab

🔗 Read the full article at the link in our bio.

🥼🧪🦠 Our first ever ChE Summer Immersion program was a massive success!

21 community college students spent two days touring faculty labs, learning about chemical engineering, performing experiments and networking with community members.

This program was made possible by our incredibly dedicated staff, graduate students and faculty. 👏👏👏

While was intended to be funny, it turned out very wholesome. Our students are thoughtful, kind and give great advice.

For more from our students read their full “People of ChE” featured articles at the link in our bio. 🫶

Our graduate students are not only smart and cool, they’re also award winning!!

Congratulations to Donal Couch, Kody Whisnant and Kunal Velinkar as recent conference award recipients this spring and summer.

🏆Donal Couch (Lin lab)
Award Winner at the Institute for Energy Solutions’ 2026 Energy Symposium Student Poster Competition.
Donal’s winning poster was titled, “Harnessing Lignocellulosic Feedstocks for Sustainable Biofuel Production: A Modular Microbial Co-Culture Approach to Energy Independence.”

🏆Kunal Velinkar (Nikolla lab)
Recipient of the Best Student Poster Award during the 2026 47th Annual Spring Symposium of the Michigan Catalysis Society.
Kunal’s poster was titled, “Role of A-site Identity in Dictating Stability of Ru-based Pyrochlores During Acidic Oxygen Evolution Reaction.”

He shares, “it was a great opportunity to share my research with colleagues from academia and industry, receive thoughtful feedback, and discuss broader challenges in the field of catalysis.”

🏆Kody Whisnant (Kotov lab)
Recipient of the Best Student Talk Presentation at the 2026 Science in the Savannah: U.S.-Africa Conference.
Kody’s research focuses on applying graph-theoretical protocols as a unified method to quantify network structural complexity for effectual material design.

He’s, “extremely honored to have had the opportunity to help represent U-M at this conference connecting global experts to collectively address pressing global and regional challenges.”

Congrats again! 👏👏👏👏

Meet Dean Sweeney!

Inspired by his family’s work ethic and driven by a passion for scientific discovery, Dean is using AI to tackle complex challenges in catalysis while preparing for a career at the intersection of science and technology.

“My time at U-M has been full of good experiences. What stands out most is the people. A PhD program brings together people from a wide array of backgrounds, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed making friends and learning about cultures from all over the world.”

Dean’s research combines atomistic modeling and AI to study heterogenous catalysis.

🔗 Learn more about Dean at the link in our bio.

Just in case you were wondering what the movie about Michigan Chemical Engineering might feel like.

Congratulations to ChE Instructional Lab Supervisor Dr. Christopher Barr for his election to Chair-Elect of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Chemical Engineering Division! 🎉

Barr’s knowledge, leadership and dedication to students makes this honor incredibly well deserved. He will be the 10th ASEE Chair-Elect with U-M affiliation in the Division’s nearly 100-year history, following in the footsteps of ChE faculty like H. Scott Fogler and Joseph J. Martin.

As is tradition, last week at the annual ASEE conference in Charlotte, North Carolina the ASEE Division Chair ceremoniously passed the Golden Wrench, now in necklace form, engraved with the names of previous chairs.

Chris will officially begin his Chair-Elect role on July 1, and will serve as ChE Division Chair for 2027–2028.

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