News & EventsDepartment Events
Events
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May14
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe Chemical and Biological Engineering Department is pleased to present the 36th Annual Hugh M. Hulburt Memorial Lecture by Concetta La Marca, Senior Principal Consultant at Chemours.
Concetta La Marca will present a seminar titled "Industrial Reaction Engineering: Bridging Research, Practical Fundamentals, and Product Innovation."
Modern chemical manufacturing relies on the practical application of core engineering principles to solve technical and business challenges. In this lecture, I will share highlights from my career at DuPont and Chemours, emphasizing how reaction kinetics and reactor design are implemented in industrial settings. Using refrigerant chemistry as a case study, I will demonstrate how fundamental principles guide process and product development and support compliance with evolving regulations. Throughout my journey, the guidance of experienced mentors shaped my approach to complex problems, technical growth, and professional development. I will also discuss the importance of passing these lessons on—mentoring new engineers, fostering collaboration across disciplines, and engaging with the broader scientific community. The talk offers a firsthand perspective on the role of chemical engineers in translating research into industrial practice, advancing innovative products, and building a culture of mentorship in industry.
Concetta La Marca is Senior Principal Consultant in Reaction Engineering at Chemours, with a distinguished career advancing industrial chemical processes and product development. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware, a B.S. from MIT, and is a licensed Professional Engineer in Delaware. Dr. La Marca’s expertise includes reaction kinetics, reactor design, microkinetic modeling, and scale-up of fluorochemical and refrigerant processes.
Her work has been recognized with election to the National Academy of Engineering (2025) for contributions to advanced, environmentally sustainable refrigerants. Dr. La Marca has served as adjunct faculty at Rowan University. She is deeply committed to mentoring emerging engineers, fostering collaboration across disciplines, and engaging with the broader scientific community.
Dr. La Marca is an active leader in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), serving as Fellow and Board member, and in the International Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering (ISCRE), where she currently serves as its President. She has contributed to editorial boards, authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, and holds several patents. Her dedication to mentorship, collaboration, and professional service continues to shape the field of reaction engineering.
TIME Thursday, May 14, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION Pancoe Auditorium, Pancoe-NSUHS Life Sciences Pavilion map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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May20
EVENT DETAILS
lessInformation forthcoming
TIME Wednesday, May 20, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
LOCATION LR5, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Will Chaussee william.chaussee@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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May21
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is pleased to present a seminar by Jianping Fu, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Fu will present a seminar titled "Bioengineered Human Embryo and Organ Models as the New Frontier."
Early human development remains largely mysterious and challenging to study. In this talk, I will describe our efforts to harness human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) and bioengineering approaches to create controllable models of human peri-gastrulation development and early organogenesis. These models recapitulate key in vivo developmental landmarks, including amniotic cavity formation, amniotic ectoderm-epiblast patterning, primordial germ cell specification, embryonic germ layer organization, yolk sac formation, and primitive hematopoiesis. Our current work focuses on using these controllable models as experimental platforms to dissect the molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying cell fate decisions, tissue patterning, and self-organization during human peri-gastrulation.
I will also discuss our application of bioengineering tools and hPSCs to model critical aspects of early human neural development, including neural patterning in both brain and spinal cord regions, along rostrocaudal and dorsoventral axes. Ongoing projects further aim to model key features of human heart and gut tube development, as well as somitogenesis. Together, these efforts have established a suite of bioengineered human embryo and organ models with in vivo-like spatiotemporal cell differentiation and organization, providing powerful platforms for studying human development, physiology, and disease.
Dr. Jianping Fu is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Fu’s research integrates bioengineering, stem cell biology, and developmental biology to advance our understanding of human development and disease. His work has made foundational contributions to the creation of stem cell-based embryo and organ models, most notably establishing the first three-dimensional human embryo model (Nature Communications, 2017; Nature, 2019) and the first patterned, three-dimensional human neural tube model containing both brain and spinal cord regions (Nature, 2024). Dr. Fu received major awards from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Biomedical Engineering Society. He is an elected Fellow of AAAS, AIMBE, RSC, ASME, IAMBE, and BMES. Beyond his research, Dr. Fu is deeply engaged in scientific leadership and service. He served on the ISSCR Guidelines Working Group and now chairs the ISSCR Scientific Programs Committee. In recognition of his service, he received the ISSCR Public Service Award in 2025. He is currently co-Editor-in-Chief of npj Regenerative Medicine and serves on editorial boards of several journals including Cell Stem Cell and Biophysical Journal.
TIME Thursday, May 21, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION Pancoe Auditorium, Pancoe-NSUHS Life Sciences Pavilion map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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May27
EVENT DETAILS
lessInformation forthcoming
TIME Wednesday, May 27, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
LOCATION LR5, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Will Chaussee william.chaussee@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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May28
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is pleased to present a seminar by Brandon DeKosky, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT.
Dr. DeKosky will present a seminar titled "Scalable Approaches to Study and Engineer Immune Receptors."
Our immune systems use highly variable sets of adaptive immune proteins – antibodies and T cell receptors – that provide targeted protection and memory against foreign agents. Current methods to discover new immune drugs and explore the vast diversity of adaptive immune proteins are generally limited in either quality or throughput. The limitations of current screening technologies make protein drug discovery and engineering time-consuming, expensive, and risky. To address these bottlenecks, we established a suite of new high-throughput functional screening platforms for antibodies and T cell receptors. We will share applications of these technologies to answer basic questions in adaptive immune recognition, to study the biophysical properties that support protective immunity, and to improve immune drug discovery.
Dr. Brandon DeKosky is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT and a Core Member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, Harvard, and MIT. Research efforts at the DeKosky lab have developed a suite of high-throughput single-cell platforms for large-scale analyses of adaptive immunity. These studies are advancing new approaches in biologic drug discovery, and are cataloguing the vast genetic and functional diversity of adaptive immune cells across disease settings. Key application areas include infectious disease interventions, especially malaria and HIV-1 prevention, and the development of personalized cancer therapies.
Dr. DeKosky has been awarded several honors for his research program. His Ph.D. research was supported by a Hertz Foundation Fellowship and an NSF Graduate Fellowship. DeKosky was also awarded a K99 Pathway to Independence Award and an NIH DP5 Early Independence Award. More recently he received a Department of Defense Career Development Award, the James S. Huston Antibody Science Talent Award, the Amgen Young Investigator Award, and the American Association of Immunologists ASPIRE award.
TIME Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION Pancoe Auditorium, Pancoe-NSUHS Life Sciences Pavilion map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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Jun3
EVENT DETAILS
lessInformation forthcoming
TIME Wednesday, June 3, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
LOCATION LR5, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Will Chaussee william.chaussee@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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Jun4
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is pleased to present our annual Contextualizing Engineering Seminar with Kevin Solomon, Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware.
Dr. Solomon will present a seminar titled "HIDDEN FIGURES: The unseen power of gut microbes and a culture of inclusion advancing next‑gen biomanufacturing."
Microbial chemical factories are sustainable biomanufacturing platforms that complement traditional petrochemical industries by using renewable and/or alternative carbon sources. Most attractive of these are those derived from unconventional microbes due to their rich repertoire of enzymes to efficiently process diverse carbon sources and unique capacity to catalyze certain industrial chemistries at scale. These properties are frequently a consequence of the high resource competition in their native exotic environments, such as animal microbiomes. However, these microbes remain poorly characterized with few tools to deploy them for industrial applications. In this talk, I will describe our progress towards the study and engineering of these systems for the use of post-consumer plastics and lignocellulosic biomass. I will also share some of our work building an inclusive community of scholars to foster development of a more creative next generation workforce.
Dr. Kevin Solomon is the Thomas & Kipp Gutshall Career Development Associate Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware. His work focuses on developing environmental microbes and microbiomes that are well-adapted for applications in sustainability, materials, and health via systems and synthetic biology approaches. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering from McMaster University, an MS in Chemical Engineering Practice from MIT, and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from MIT. He has been recognized with multiple awards for research, teaching, and service including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Biden in 2025, a US Department of Energy Early Career Award (2019), an NSF CAREER Award (2022), the Society for Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology (SIMB) Early Career Award (2022), the Lloyd N. Ferguson Young Scientist Award from NOBCChE (2023), the American Chemical Society (ACS) Biochemical Technology (BIOT) Division Early Career Award (2023) and the AIChE Division 15 Early Career Award (2023). He has provided expert testimony before the 116th US House of Representatives on the convergence of engineering and biology and has coauthored several technology roadmaps for engineering biology.
TIME Thursday, June 4, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION Pancoe Auditorium, Pancoe-NSUHS Life Sciences Pavilion map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)