As Rachita Rana says farewell to the chemical engineering department, the fifth-year Ph.D. student reflects on her research at UC Davis and the tools and lessons she will take with her.
UC Davis chemical engineering students get an up-close look at the processes of pharmaceutical manufacturing during a tour of AMPAC Fine Chemicals, turning theory into reality and giving a glimpse of what a day in the life of a career in chemical engineering could look like.
Ana Reyes Ochoa, a fifth-year biochemical engineering major with a minor in Native American Studies, has found the connections she’s made at UC Davis to be particularly impactful. Originally from Highland Falls, New York, Ochoa has remained busy as a member of several different clubs and organizations in the College of Engineering.
The College of Engineering is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023 Graduate Student Excellence Awards: Isabella Loureiro Muller Costa, Peifen Lyu, Patrick Cunningham and Tanner Finney.
For the first time on a commercial scale, researchers from UC Davis have controlled the redox potential during a wine fermentation, an important step in making winemaking more efficient and reproducible and paving the way for a new generation of experiments in viticulture, microbiology and fermentation.
Engineering in the food industry requires a knowledge of food processes, science, chemical engineering principles and culture. This spring, chemical engineering undergraduate students learned about all four during a guest lecture and Native American cooking demonstration from Café Ohlone, the world’s first and only Ohlone restaurant.
Matt McNulty, Ph.D. ’22 is this year’s recipient of the UC Davis Graduate Studies Allen G. Marr Prize for dissertation excellence. McNulty is a cutting-edge researcher in plant molecular farming and a founder of the emerging field of space systems bioengineering with a passion for helping others.
Dr. Jovana Veselinović is the 2022 recipient of the College of Engineering's Zuhair A. Munir Award for best doctoral dissertation. She conducted groundbreaking interdisciplinary work on using nanoporous gold to detect biomarkers of disease while falling in love with Davis. She is the third straight chemical engineer to receive the honor.
In high school, fourth-year biochemical engineering major Stephan Alfaro never could have seen himself as a biochemical engineer, but through lab experience, mentorship and taking advantage of resources at UC Davis, he fell in love with the field and looks forward to making a difference.
Astronauts might one day grow and eat genetically modified plants to ward off disease associated with long spaceflights. Researchers at the College of Engineering have developed a transgenic, or genetically modified, lettuce producing a drug to protect against bone density loss in microgravity. Kevin Yates, a graduate student working with Professor Karen McDonald and Adjunct Professor Somen Nandi at the UC Davis Department of Chemical Engineering, developed the lettuce that expresses a fusion protein combining PTH with part of a human antibody protein. The fusion protein is designed to be stable in the bloodstream and to allow astronauts to potentially purify the drug from plant extracts, Nandi said.
