Women in STEM

The best piece of advice M.S. student Daniela Barajas Ivey received as she earned her B.S. in chemical engineering at UC Davis was, “chemical engineering can be found in all disciplines.” She took this to heart and after joining the aerospace industry, she returned to UC Davis as a master’s student to study environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) for human habitats in deep space.

Assistant professor of teaching Glaucia Helena Carvalho do Prado joined UC Davis in fall 2021, energized by the opportunity to connect with the diverse campus and share her background in food engineering to show students how to apply their skill sets to a variety of fields.

Chemical engineering (CHE) distinguished professor Jennifer Sinclair Curtis has received the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award. Every year, the award recognizes world-renowned researchers from all disciplines whose fundamental discoveries, theories and findings have had a lasting effect on their field and brings them to German institutions as visiting scholars.

UC Davis engineering alumna Kim Budil, M.S. ’88, Ph.D. ’94 was named the 13th director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the first woman director in the lab’s 69-year history.

Chemical engineering professor Karen McDonald and her team have received funding to develop plant-based methods for producing FDA-approved drugs in under 24 hours for use in deep space. The proposal, “A Plant-Based Platform for ‘Just in Time’ Medications” is one of six to receive of a two year, $800,000 Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) grant from the Baylor College of Medicine.

A new study from UC Davis found that the louder people talk, the more airborne particles they emit, making loudness a potential factor in spreading airborne diseases. The study, led by chemical engineering Ph.D. student Sima Asadi in professor William Ristenpart’s group, looked at particle emission during speech as a function of loudness, among other factors.