School of Engineering
Showing 201-220 of 270 Results
-
Milenia Rojas Mendoza
Ph.D. Student in Chemical Engineering, admitted Autumn 2022
OTL Intern, Office of Technology Licensing (OTL)BioMilenia Rojas (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the Chemical Engineering Department at Stanford University. She is advised by Thomas Jaramillo. Milenia's research focuses on integrating cost-effective, earth-abundant metal catalysts into membrane electrode assembly water electrolyzers for hydrogen production. Her goal is to reduce production costs, extend lifespan, and enhance scalability to support the energy transition. She is part of the Emerson Consequential Scholars Program and works part time at the office of technology transfer. She graduated in 2022 with a Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rochester.
-
Lorenzo Rosa
Visiting Scholar, Program-Bao Z.
Affiliate, Program-Cargnello, M.BioDr. Lorenzo Rosa is a Principal Investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science and an Assistant Professor (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is an environmental engineer whose research focuses on the resilience and sustainability of water, energy, and food systems under climate change and resource constraints.
His work combines systems modeling, hydrological simulation, techno-economic analysis, life-cycle assessment, optimization, and geospatial data science to evaluate emerging technologies and identify pathways toward sustainable development. His research spans water scarcity, climate-resilient agriculture, low-carbon fertilizers and fuels, and the environmental and economic feasibility of emerging climate solutions.
Dr. Rosa earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral training at ETH Zurich. He collaborates with academic, industry, and policy partners to translate scientific discoveries into actionable solutions. He also serves as an advisor to Ammobia, a climate technology company developing green ammonia production systems to support industrial decarbonization.
His contributions have been recognized through the American Geophysical Union Science for Solutions Award, the Leonardo Award in Engineering, Forbes 30 Under 30, and designation as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher.
Recent publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=riiy1mEAAAAJ
Research group website: https://lorenzo-rosa.wixsite.com/curriculum -
Elizabeth Sattely
Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering
BioPlants have an extraordinary capacity to harvest atmospheric CO2 and sunlight for the production of energy-rich biopolymers, clinically used drugs, and other biologically active small molecules. The metabolic pathways that produce these compounds are key to developing sustainable biofuel feedstocks, protecting crops from pathogens, and discovering new natural-product based therapeutics for human disease. These applications motivate us to find new ways to elucidate and engineer plant metabolism. We use a multidisciplinary approach combining chemistry, enzymology, genetics, and metabolomics to tackle problems that include new methods for delignification of lignocellulosic biomass and the engineering of plant antibiotic biosynthesis.
-
Eric S.G. Shaqfeh
Lester Levi Carter Professor and Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI have over 25 years experience in theoretical and computational research related to complex fluids following my PhD in 1986. This includes work in suspension mechanics of rigid partlcles (rods), solution mechanics of polymers and most recently suspensions of vesicles, capsules and mixtures of these with rigid particles. My research group is internationally known for pioneering work in all these areas.
-
Andrew Spakowitz
Senior Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs, Professor of Chemical Engineering, of Materials Science and Engineering and, by courtesy, of Applied Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsTheory and computation of biological processes and complex materials
-
James Swartz
James H. Clark Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Chemical Engineering and of Bioengineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProgram Overview
The world we enjoy, including the oxygen we breathe, has been beneficially created by biological systems. Consequently, we believe that innovative biotechnologies can also serve to help correct a natural world that non-natural technologies have pushed out of balance. We must work together to provide a sustainable world system capable of equitably improving the lives of over 10 billion people.
Toward that objective, our program focuses on human health as well as planet health. To address particularly difficult challenges, we seek to synergistically combine: 1) the design and evolution of complex protein-based nanoparticles and enzymatic systems with 2) innovative, uniquely capable cell-free production technologies.
To advance human health we focus on: a) achieving the 120 year-old dream of producing “magic bullets”; smart nanoparticles that deliver therapeutics or genetic therapies only to specific cells in our bodies; b) precisely designing and efficiently producing vaccines that mimic viruses to stimulate safe and protective immune responses; and c) providing a rapid point-of-care liquid biopsy that will count and harvest circulating tumor cells.
To address planet health we are pursuing biotechnologies to: a) inexpensively use atmospheric CO2 to produce commodity biochemicals as the basis for a new carbon negative chemical industry, and b) mitigate the intermittency challenges of photovoltaic and wind produced electricity by producing hydrogen either from biomass sugars or directly from sunlight.
More than 25 years ago, Professor Swartz began his pioneering work to develop cell-free biotechnologies. The new ability to precisely focus biological systems toward efficiently addressing new, “non-natural” objectives has proven tremendously useful as we seek to address the crucial and very difficult challenges listed above. Another critical feature of the program is the courage (or naivete) to approach important objectives that require the development and integration of several necessary-but- not-sufficient technology advances.
