Karen McDonald elected AIChE Fellow
By Constanze Ditterich
Chemical engineering professor Karen McDonald was elected fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the organization’s highest grade of membership. AIChE fellowship recognizes members who have significant professional accomplishments, contributions and service in chemical engineering and is only achieved through election by fellow members.
McDonald is the fifth faculty member from the College of Engineering to receive this honor, joining professors Ahmet Palazoglu and David Block, distinguished professors Jennifer Curtis and Robert Powell and professor emeritus Pieter Stroeve. Her award was recognized at the 2021 Virtual AIChE Spring Meeting on April 20, 2021.
“It is a great honor to be elected fellow of the AIChE and to be recognized by my colleagues and peers,” said McDonald. “I particularly want to acknowledge the many talented graduate students, undergraduates, postdocs, my wonderful faculty collaborators and mentors, and the amazing staff I have had the opportunity to work with over my 35+ year career in the Department of Chemical Engineering.”
McDonald joined UC Davis in 1985 after completing her Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. She was the first female faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering and one of the first few in the College of Engineering at UC Davis. Since then, she has been a leader in biotechnology and for women in STEM.
For many years, she and her team have studied how to harness plants as factories to produce environmentally-friendly and cost-effective recombinant proteins. She has pioneered novel expression systems (i.e., the genetic instructions that direct the host cell to produce the non-native protein) and engineering technologies to harvest recombinant proteins, including human drugs, using whole plants or plant cell cultures. These are significantly cheaper and safer compared with traditional mammalian cell cultures or microbial bioreactors. The field of plant-made protein research is expanding quickly and might be instrumental in globally combatting COVID-19 and keeping humans alive in deep space missions.
McDonald has also taken on various leadership roles at UC Davis. She served as associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Engineering for 13 years and as faculty director of the UC Davis ADVANCE program, an initiative to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic STEM careers. She has also been heavily involved in the UC Davis Biotechnology Program and led the development of the Biochemical Engineering undergraduate program.
AIChE is the world's leading organization for chemical engineering professionals, with more than 60,000 members from more than 110 countries. McDonald's contributions to AIChE are numerous whether as session chair at meetings, advisor for the student chapter at UC Davis or reviewer for AIChE journals.
“AIChE has been an essential part of my continuing education and professional development throughout my career,” McDonald said.