News & EventsDepartment Events
Events
-
Oct22
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is proud to present our 20th annual Richard S.H. Mah Lecture with speaker Jim Rawlings from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Process Engineering at the Dawn of (Generative) AI
Maintaining high standards of living while decreasing our impact on the planet requires both new manufacturing technologies as well as increasingly efficient operation of these technologies at large scale. Process systems engineering will play a critical role in addressing these challenges.
We start with a review of some of the advances that have taken place in the field of process systems engineering during the last 50 years. We focus specifically on process control because it is currently faced with several new challenges: increasingly stringent product quality requirements, tighter environmental regulations, and increasingly transient operating conditions, e.g., large fluctuations in electricity prices and supply chains. We present the central ideas of model predictive control, which has become during this period the leading advanced feedback control method, both in industrial practice as well as a topic of control theory research. We discuss the fundamental reasons for this success, which builds upon the foundations of optimal control and dynamic modeling, supplemented with measurement feedback to make the resulting system robust against model inaccuracies and disturbances.
At the dawn of generative AI, we anticipate using machine learning and deep neural networks trained on large datasets to provide improved modeling capability. But when we create models for process optimization or process control, the basic issue to be understood is how much information are we able to extract from available measurements, and how much domain-specific structural information must we provide, e.g., conservation laws and thermodynamic principles, before the optimization of such composite models is reliable and useful. We currently lack systematic guidelines for how best to combine these two sources of information.
Finally we discuss the education of chemical engineers to understand, operate and improve these new technologies. Adding to our educational challenge, universities are now seeing the first generation of engineering students who first ask a large language model (LLM) agent to solve their homework exercises or write their software code. Meanwhile most of these exercises were designed to be solved solely by the students, to start building up their engineering understanding and intuition through simple examples. This mismatch in current educational materials and widely-available LLM technology is a pressing challenge that educators must now address.
James B. Rawlings received the B.S. from the University of Texas and the Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, both in Chemical Engineering. He spent one year at the University of Stuttgart as a NATO postdoctoral fellow and then joined the faculty at the University of Texas. He moved to the University of Wisconsin in 1995, and then to the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2018, and is currently the Mellichamp Process Control Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and the co-director of the Texas-Wisconsin-California Control Consortium (TWCCC).
Professor Rawlings's research interests are in the areas of chemical process modeling, monitoring and control, nonlinear model predictive control, moving horizon state estimation, and molecular-scale chemical reaction engineering. He has written numerous research articles and coauthored three textbooks: "Modeling and Analysis Principles for Chemical and Biological Engineers," 2nd ed. (2022), with Mike Graham, "Model Predictive Control: Theory Computation, and Design," 2nd ed. (2020), with David Mayne and Moritz Diehl, and "Chemical Reactor Analysis and Design Fundamentals," 2nd ed. (2020), with John Ekerdt.
In recognition of his research and teaching, Professor Rawlings has
received several awards including:- Election to the National Academy of Engineering;
- John M. Prausnitz Institute Lecturer, AIChE
- Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award, American Automatic Control Council
- William H. Walker Award for Excellence in Contributions to Chemical
- Engineering Literature from the AIChE;
- Warren K. Lewis Award for Chemical Engineering Education from the AIChE;
- Inaugural High Impact Paper Award from the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC);
- Ragazzini Education Award, American Automatic Control Council;
He is a fellow of IFAC, IEEE, and AIChE.
Dr. Rawlings' Mah Lecture will be hosted by department chair Danielle Tullman-Ercek.
TIME Thursday, October 22, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
-
Oct29
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is pleased to welcome guest speaker José L. Avalos, PhD., from Princeton University to present his seminar:
"Building smarter microbial factories with spatial and temporal controls using organelle engineering and optogenetics."
Engineered microorganisms are powerful cell factories for producing fuels, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other valuable products. However, achieving commercially viable titers, yields, and productivities remains challenging. Spatial and temporal control of engineered metabolism offers promising strategies to overcome these limitations.
In the first part of my talk, I will present advances in compartmentalizing biosynthetic pathways within yeast mitochondria and engineered biomolecular condensates. I will discuss how targeting pathways to mitochondria and manipulating mitochondrial morphology can enhance chemical production, as well as strategies to engineer synthetic condensates that recruit enzymes, small molecules, and biological membranes to channel metabolic flux and exploit membrane functions.
In the second part, I will highlight our pioneering work using optogenetics to dynamically regulate microbial metabolism. Light provides tunable, reversible, and programmable control, enabling new approaches to fermentation automation and optimization. I will describe optogenetic systems that improve chemical production by controlling microbial growth and metabolism, overcoming limited light penetration in high-density bioreactors, and dynamically regulating population composition in microbial consortia.
Together, these advances demonstrate how integrating spatial and temporal control can establish a new paradigm in metabolic engineering, expanding the capabilities of microbial cell factories.
José L. Avalos, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, The Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, and The Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment of Princeton UniversityJosé Avalos earned a B.E. in chemical engineering from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and an MSc in biochemical research from Imperial College in London. He then received a Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. He conducted postdoctoral research at The Rockefeller University on molecular neuroscience, and then at MIT/Whitehead Institute, in the Department of Chemical Engineering on metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. He has been a faculty member at Princeton University since 2015, where he leads a research group focused on the use of biotechnology to address challenges in renewable energy, sustainable manufacturing, the environment, and human health. He has received several awards, including the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellowship, the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship Award, the Pew scholarship, the NSF CAREER Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the HHMI Gilliam award, and the ACS BIOT Young Investigator Award.
TIME Thursday, October 29, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
-
Nov5
EVENT DETAILS
lessMore details to come.
TIME Thursday, November 5, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
-
Nov12
EVENT DETAILS
lessMore details to come.
TIME Thursday, November 12, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
-
Nov16
EVENT DETAILS
lessRegular registration for Winter quarter begins
TIME Monday, November 16, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
-
Nov19
EVENT DETAILS
lessMore details to come.
TIME Thursday, November 19, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
-
Nov20
EVENT DETAILS
lessDissertation, PhD Final Exam, and change of grade forms due to TGS for Fall PhD candidates
TIME Friday, November 20, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
-
Nov25
EVENT DETAILS
lessThanksgiving Vacation begins at 6:00 PM (No classes, University offices closed)
TIME Wednesday, November 25, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
-
Nov30
EVENT DETAILS
lessFall Classes Resume
TIME Monday, November 30, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
-
Dec3
EVENT DETAILS
lessMore details to come.
TIME Thursday, December 3, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
-
Dec5
EVENT DETAILS
lessFall classes end
TIME Saturday, December 5, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
-
Dec7
EVENT DETAILS
lessFall Exams begin
TIME Monday, December 7, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
-
Dec12
EVENT DETAILS
lessFall exams end
TIME Saturday, December 12, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
-
Dec12
EVENT DETAILSmore info
lessThe ceremony will take place on Saturday, December 12 in Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, 50 Arts Circle Drive.
TIME Saturday, December 12, 2026 at 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
LOCATION Pick-Staiger Concert Hall map it
CONTACT Andi Joppie andi.joppie@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science