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5/11/2026
Penn State’s Chem-E-Car team, part of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) student chapter, placed first out of 21 schools in the Chem-E-Car Performance Competition at the 2026 AIChE Mid-Atlantic Conference. This recognition qualifies the team for the 2026 Annual Student Conference, an international competition that will take place in November. Last year, Penn State’s Chem-E-Car team took fourth place in the global competition.
5/5/2026
Chemical engineering major Jacob Capets has been named the recipient of the Douglas G. and Regina C. Evans Award for Research Achievement from Schreyer Honors College. In total, Schreyer Honors College awarded seven Schreyer Scholars and two faculty members Schreyer Honors College Awards for the 2025-26 academic year.
4/22/2026
Jacob Capets, an undergraduate student studying chemical engineering, earned a Student and Postdoctoral Poster Award from the American Physical Society DPOLY division for his research on self-healing coatings. His work was recognized among dozens of presentations for its contributions to advancing polymer materials research.
4/9/2026
The Penn State College of Engineering has named its student marshals for the spring 2026 commencement, recognizing top students from each major and ROTC for academic excellence and leadership. The honor highlights their achievements and contributions to the engineering community as they prepare to graduate.
4/9/2026
The winners of the 18th annual Materials Visualization Competition (MVC) have been announced. MVC is a scientific visual and artistic competition that celebrates the quality of research in materials at Penn State and promotes awareness of materials science through visualization. MVC is sponsored by the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Institute.
4/6/2026
The Penn State College of Engineering will recognize 21 alumni with the 2026 Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award and Early Career Award in a ceremony on April 9 in the State Theatre. The event marks the second year in which the two awards will be presented during a combined ceremony.
4/6/2026
Cell cultures — single layers of cells grown in a small dish — have enabled researchers to study biological growth, develop or test drugs and even discover what causes some diseases. Cell spheroids, 3D versions of cell cultures built using a process known as cell aggregation, are the next step in advancing this work, capable of more closely modeling real tissue.
3/10/2026
Biomaterials are specifically engineered to support tissue, nerve and muscle regeneration across the body, yet physicians and researchers have limited control over the size and connectivity of the internal pores that transfer oxygen and vital nutrients to where they are most needed. To solve this problem and better support tissue regeneration, a team at Penn State has designed a new class of tunable biomaterials.
2/20/2026
A stretchy, conductive type of plastic could help power the next generation of implantable biomedical devices, like longer-lasting pacemakers or glucose monitors, according to Enrique Gomez, professor of chemical engineering at Penn State.
2/18/2026
Amir Sheikhi is the principal investigator on a paper, recently published in Advanced Functional Materials, that proposes a novel technology of isolating and recovering dysprosium, a rare earth element used to manufacture semiconductors, engines, generators and more.
2/16/2026
Penn State's Office of Faculty Affairs has named 14 new distinguished professors for 2026, including Michael Janik and Phillip Savage of the Robert V. Waltemeyer Department of Chemical Engineering.
1/27/2026
Fifteen faculty members, including six from the College of Engineering, have joined the Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE), reflecting the institute’s growing interdisciplinary reach. Together, they bring expertise that connects energy systems, environmental processes and human dimensions, opening new pathways for collaboration and shared research efforts.
12/11/2025
A research team that includes Andrew Zydney, Bayard D. Kunkle Chair and professor of chemical engineering at Penn State, and is led by the University of Delaware’s Kelvin Lee has received a three-year, $10.5 million funding award through the Gates Grand Challenges Program aimed at significantly lowering the cost of manufacturing monoclonal antibodies. Penn State’s share of the funding is $600,000.
12/9/2025
Oil-in-water droplets respond to chemical cues by forming arm-like extensions that resemble filopodia, which are used by living cells to sense and explore their environment. A research team led by chemists at Penn State studies the droplets to glimpse how matter may have transitioned to life billions of years ago.
12/5/2025
The Penn State Learning Factory will host its biannual end-of-semester showcase for engineering students to present their cornerstone and capstone design projects. The in-person showcase will take place from 1:00-3:00 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 11, at the Bryce Jordan Center, while a virtual showcase will take place on Friday, Dec. 12 through Friday, Dec. 19. Both versions of the event are free and open to the public.
12/1/2025
Four Penn State chemical engineering undergraduates earned top placements at the 2025 AIChE Undergraduate Student Poster Competition, with several additional students presenting their research across diverse technical areas.
11/12/2025
Penn State will celebrate its eleventh GivingTuesday on Dec. 2 — and the College of Engineering invites alumni and friends to be a part of the event by making a gift to support engineering student success.
10/30/2025
With a $450,000, three-year U.S. National Science Foundation grant and equivalent funding from the Binational Science Foundation in Israel, an international team of researchers co-led by Penn State Professor Thomas Wood will investigate the role E. coli plays in the gut and how it may affect intestinal inflammation.
10/24/2025
A research team led by Thomas Wood, professor of chemical engineering at Penn State, recently observed a previously overlooked defense mechanism in bacteria containing extremely old, dormant viruses. They investigated this mechanism in the cells containing these sleeping defenders, finding it could successfully help bacteria defend against viruses. The researchers published their work, which the team said could potentially be employed to create stronger antivirus systems for the medical and food industries, in Nucleic Acids Research.
10/20/2025
Inspired by an artist’s stencils, researchers have developed atomic-level precision patterning on nanoparticle surfaces, allowing them to “paint” gold nanoparticles with polymers, or long chains of small molecules, to give them an array of new shapes and functions. The “patchy nanoparticles” developed by a multi-institutional team that includes researchers at Penn State can be made in large batches, used for a variety of electronic, optical or biomedical applications, or used as building blocks for new complex materials and metamaterials.
10/17/2025
Five years ago, the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation established the A. James Clark Scholars Program, a comprehensive scholarship and curricular support program for exceptional Penn State engineering undergraduates who demonstrate financial need. Now, with an additional $11 million investment, the Clark Foundation renewed its support for the program, ensuring that 10 new undergraduate engineering majors at Penn State will receive full tuition, fees, room and board, and curricular enrichment support each year in perpetuity.
10/13/2025
Zachary Vinitski, a chemical engineering major with a minor in biomedical engineering, has been named the fall 2025 student marshal for the Penn State College of Engineering. A 4.0 student and campus leader, Vinitski has excelled in research, service and leadership, and will be honored at the Dec. 21 commencement ceremony.
10/10/2025
Building on a legacy of excellence in glass science and engineering, the new Center for Glass Research (CGR) was recently launched at Penn State. It brings together the expertise of researchers from Penn State, Alfred University, and the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) in a strategic collaborative initiative.
10/2/2025
Heating and cooling account for most of the energy used in homes and businesses, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Additionally, heat gain and loss through windows can waste up to 30% of the energy used to heat and cool a home. With this in mind, a research team at Penn State is exploring the development of smart windows that use a unique polymer to block sunlight.
9/23/2025
Penn State’s Chem-E Car Team won the poster competition and placed sixth at the AIChE regional competition, earning an invitation to the national conference in Boston. The team’s car features a student-built combustion engine powered by homemade ethanol fuel, a first for Penn State in several years.
9/15/2025
The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State has selected eight research teams that span 12 departments across six colleges to receive 2025-26 seed grant funding. Three of the eight teams are led by College of Engineering faculty, and an additional three teams have College of Engineering collaborators.
9/9/2025
A group of tiny particles followed “breadcrumbs” left behind by a different group of particles in new experiments demonstrating the first steps in creating intelligent communicating systems involving active particles — sometimes called nanobots — that perform specialized tasks. The experiment was possible thanks to a new microfluidic tool developed by researchers at Penn State that allowed them to observe the particles for far longer than had been previously possible.
9/2/2025
Roya Koshani, a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State, has been named a 2025 Future Faculty Awardee by the American Chemical Society’s Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE) for her promising research in sustainable polymer design and materials engineering. She received the award certificate at the 2025 ACS Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C..
8/15/2025
Most people would view a lake full of radioactive, toxic waste as garbage — not Adam Smerigan. A doctoral candidate in Penn State’s Robert V. Waltemeyer Department of Chemical Engineering, Smerigan works with Professor Rui Shi in the Sustainable Design, Systems and Decision-Making (S2D2) Lab to focus on finding treasure in the trash — recovering rare earth minerals, such as neodymium, cerium and praseodymium, from toxic waste.
8/7/2025
The chemical engineering department within the Penn State College of Engineering has been named the Robert V. Waltemeyer Department of Chemical Engineering through a $5 million endowment from 1956 chemical engineering alumnus Robert V. Waltemeyer and his wife, Gloria.
7/23/2025
The J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School at Penn State has awarded its first round of Fox Endowment scholarships to 18 graduate students in 15 graduate programs. Seven of the recipients were from the College of Engineering. More than 600 graduate students applied for a Fox scholarship.
7/7/2025
Four emerging leaders in science and innovation have been selected as the inaugural fellows in Penn State’s Next-Gen Innovators Fellowship program, an initiative designed to close critical training gaps in research translation and technology commercialization.
7/2/2025
The Penn State Engineering Alumni Society (PSEAS) held its annual awards ceremony on June 20 at the State Theatre, building on its 53-year tradition of honoring excellence among engineering faculty, staff and alumni through the PSEAS awards. The award recipients were recognized in the categories of teaching, research, advising and service.
7/2/2025
Amir Sheikhi, associate professor of chemical engineering at Penn State, has been invited to participate in the 2025 Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, hosted by the National Academy of Engineering. Sheikhi will join 100 top early-career engineers to explore interdisciplinary topics such as neural engineering, quantum computing, fusion energy and sustainable aerial mobility.
7/1/2025
Ezra Clark, the Thomas K. Hepler Early Career Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering, was selected to receive $600,000 over four years as a Beckman Young Investigator. He will investigate unconventional ways of performing selective partial hydrogenation and oxidation reactions, which play a critical role in producing a wide array of the commodity and fine chemicals needed to manufacture everything from plastics
to pharmaceuticals.
6/25/2025
Seong Kim has been named department head and holder of the Walter L. Robb Family Department Head’s Chair of Chemical Engineering at Penn State, effective July 1. Kim’s promotion follows over 20 years of committed service to Penn State as a faculty member, leader and interdisciplinary researcher.
6/24/2025
Five research teams from Penn State's College of Engineering have been awarded seed grants through the Institute of Energy and the Environment’s 2025 Seed Grant Program to pursue innovative projects in sustainable energy, materials, and infrastructure. These interdisciplinary efforts aim to advance technologies such as CO? recycling, smart windows, and hydrogen storage, while positioning teams for future external funding.
6/13/2025
Several engineering-focused research projects at Penn State have received GAP Fund support to accelerate the commercialization of innovations in areas such as energy-efficient data centers, advanced manufacturing, electronic waste recycling and smart drilling materials. By bridging the gap between academic discovery and industry adoption, these projects highlight engineering’s critical role in developing scalable solutions to global technological and sustainability challenges.
