Faculty and students from the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering received several recognitions at the 2025 AIChE Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. AIChE is the world's leading organization for chemical engineering professionals, and its annual meeting is attended by academic and industry researchers from around the world.

Faculty Recognitions

Three faculty members were recognized by different divisions within AIChE.

Jacob Monroe, assistant professor, received the John C. Chen Early Career Leadership Scholarship. This scholarship, established in honor of a past AIChE president, provides funding to participate in online and in-person leadership development training. He was recognized for the scholarship at the Gathering of Leadership dinner in Boston and participated in the Career Discovery Workshop while attending the conference.

Heather Walker, teaching associate professor, received the Award for Teaching Practice from the AIChE Education Division. This award recognizes an individual who demonstrates effective teaching practices, including classroom teaching, community outreach, student support, inclusive strategies, mentoring of students and faculty, and/or dissemination of evidence-based techniques. Walker received her award at the annual awards banquet for the Education Division.

Ranil Wickramasinghe, Distinguished Professor, received the Founders Award from the AIChE Separations Division in recognition of his considerable record of service to the Separations Division and the separations area. Wickramasinghe received his award at the Separations Division Annual Awards Dinner.

Student Awards

During the Annual Student Conference at the annual meeting, chemical engineering students took home three awards.

Lillian Hutchinson, a senior chemical engineering major, won second place in the undergraduate poster competition in the Food, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Division. Her poster was titled "Design and Characterization of Adipose-Derived Stem Cell Collagen I Scaffold for Regenerative Medicine." Hutchinson is advised by Younghye Song, associate professor of biomedical engineering.

Jared Noel, a senior majoring in chemical engineering and mathematics, won second place in the Computing and Process Control Division poster competition. His poster was titled "Predicting Personalized Myocardial Fibrosis Response Patterns Using a Mechanistic Signaling Network Model." Noel is advised by William Richardson, associate professor of chemical engineering.

The department's Chem-E Car team won fifth place in the poster competition at the Chem-E Car Competition Finals at the conference. For the Chem-E Car competition, teams of students design and construct a chemically powered vehicle within certain size constraints that must travel a distance specified just before the start of the competition. The team was composed of Ashlyn Bullington, Steve Chen, Raul Diaz, Weston Edwards, Luke Knight and Blake Newell. The team was advised by Tammy Lutz-Rechtin, safety coordinator for chemical engineering; Bob Beitle, professor of chemical engineering; and Karen Beitle, chemical engineering instructor.

The department would like to extend a hearty congratulations to all of the award recipients!

About the Department of Chemical Engineering: Chemical engineering has been a part of the University of Arkansas curriculum since 1903. Today, the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering has an enrollment of over 300 students in its undergraduate and graduate degree programs and houses five endowed chairs and eight endowed professorships to support its faculty. Faculty expertise includes cellular engineering, chemical process safety, advanced materials, computational modeling, and membrane separations. A wide range of fundamental and applied research is conducted in the areas of energy, health, sustainability, and computational chemical engineering. The department is also home to the Chemical Hazards Research Center and is one of three national sites for the NSF Membrane Science, Engineering, & Technology (MAST) Center. The Department of Chemical Engineering is named for alumnus Ralph E. Martin (B.S.Ch.E.'58, M.S.Ch.E.'60) in recognition of his generous 2005 endowment gift.