Nine chemical engineering undergraduate students, including nearly a quarter of our seniors, presented research in poster sessions at the recent 2026 AIChE Annual Meeting in Minneapolis. All made amazing presentations, and remarkably two won the first prizes – Ainsley Passonno (Sophomore) in the “Food, Pharmaceutical, and Bioengineering” and Julie Yang (Senior) in the “Materials Engineering and Sciences” category! Presenting students (faculty advisors in parentheses) were Christopher Barakat (Bequette, Gorai), Mihir Koratkar (Koffas, Dordick), Collin Kolbe (Koffas), Melissa Morales (Zha, Hedden), Nehara Rajakaruna (Bae), Srishti Ramakrishnan (Kim), Oscar Siergiejuk (Koffas), Ainsley Passonno (Stoppel (Univ. of Florida), Zha (RPI)), and Julie Yang (Gomez (Penn State), Lee (RPI)). Congratulations to all of our undergraduate researchers on representing the department at AIChE, and “thank you” to all graduate student mentors and advisors!
Presenter and Title List
- Christopher Barakat: Predicting Next Day Severe Cytokine Release Syndrome In CAR-T Therapy Patients Using Machine Learning
- Mihir Koratkar: Engineering a Malic Acid-Insensitive Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxylase for Enhanced Malate
- Collin Kolbe: Engineering novel lentiviruses capable of genetic targeting for safer gene therapy
- Melissa Morales: Petroleum-Free Lip Gloss Formulation: Development and Optimization of Bio-Renewable Cosmetic Systems
- Nehara Rajakaruna: A simple procedure for making bipolar membrane layers with polymers derived from the same backbone
- Srishti Ramakrishnan: Interfacial Engineering of Circularly Polarized Light-Directed Growth and Patterning of Chiral Nanostructures
- Oscar Siergiejuk: Mechanistic Modeling as a Platform for Chondroitin Sulfotransferase Engineering and Design
- Ainsley Passonno: Establishing IAL-PID2 Insect Cell Line As a Platform for Protein Therapeutic Production
Julie Yang: Effect of Humidity on Cold Sintered Wood
From left to right: Srishti Ramakrishnan, Ainsley Passonno, Nehara Rajakaruna, Julie Yang, Mihir Koratkar, Collin Kolbe, Oscar Siergiejuk, Melissa Morales, and Christopher Barakat
First prize winners: Ainsley Passonno (left) and Julie Yang (right)