U of L Speed School of Engineering Department of Chemical Engineering

📢 Save the Date: J.B. Speed School of Engineering Fall 2026 Career Fair

Please save the date for the J.B. Speed School of Engineering Fall 2026 Career Fair at the University of Louisville. This premier recruiting event provides an excellent opportunity to connect with talented engineering students seeking co-op, internship, and full-time employment opportunities.

Career Fair Dates:

Day 1 – Thursday, September 3, 2026
AE, BE, ISE, ChE, and ME students

Day 2 – Wednesday, September 9, 2026
CEE, CSE, BACS, and ECE students

Registration will open on July 1, 2026. We encourage you to mark your calendars and plan to join us as we connect employers with the next generation of engineering talent.

We look forward to partnering with you this fall.

IYKYK!

We would like to congratulate all the Chemical Engineering students and faculty who were inducted into the Order of the Engineer at their ceremony last evening.

Bekah Boegle
Naomi Brimner
Zane Christian
Joshua Freeman
Evan Golladay
Kayla Lancaster
Taylor Ludwig
Ashley Pope
JaMel Westbrook Jr
Lauren Williams
Dr Gerold Willing

This is the time of year where our students and faculty are acknowledged for their successes and accomplishments throughout the year. The Student Government Association awarded two of our own at their banquet held in April.

Dr. Gerold Willing was named as Advisor of the Year for his work as the Speed School Student Council faculty advisor, a position he has held for 21 years.

Kayla Lancaster was given the Legacy Leadership Award for her work as the Speed School Student Council President and SGA senator this year.

Congratulations to both for their accomplishments this year.

Our 1st place winners at this year's EDIS designed and built at 15-gallon biodiesel reactor. The team produced biodiesel from waste cooking oil obtained from several local restaurants. The unit will live in the unit operations laboratory to be used by future classes as one or more unit operations laboratory experiments. It will also be used as a demonstration unit for the introduction to chemical engineering course and for visiting students during events like E-Expo.

Continuing with our EDIS announcements, our 2nd place winners took on the challenge of converting a bourbon distillery to the production of a rye-based vodka. This would allow distillers to address declines in whiskey demand while still maintaining production continuity and avoiding workforce reductions. Their design requires only minor process changes but provides producers with a practical strategy to remain competitive in an evolving spirits market.

The Speed School Engineering Design and Innovation Showcase was held last Friday. We had 6 design teams presenting their work to our wonderful group of alumni and industrial sponsor judges as well as the general public.

Our 3rd place winners designed a modular, rack-adjacent waste-heat recovery attachment for a data center to capture low-grade heat from an existing cooling interface and deliver it to a defined downstream heat sink. Their design would provide measurable heating downstream of the data center to a nearby building zone which would reduce energy usage by 30%.

Thank you to all of our alumni and friends who came out to the EDIS on Friday. It was great to see all of you there.

Please keep an eye out on this space for our next departmental events as we wrap up our 100th anniversary celebration.