Student Profile – Lauren Kielty, AIChE Student Chapter President

Junior Lauren Kielty is President of NC State’s student chapter of the AIChE for 2023.

Lauren always knew she wanted to be an engineer. She grew up loving to work on hands-on projects and joined the Academy of Engineering while she was in high school in Apex, North Carolina. When she was deciding where she might want to attend college she knew NC State has an excellent engineering program and she wanted to find a community of like-minded peers, and that was what ultimately sold her on State.

Lauren initially intended to major in biomedical engineering.  However, she was intrigued by the pharmaceutical industry, and after learning about the role of chemical engineers in the pharmaceutical industries from Prof. Lisa Bullard, CBE Teaching Professor and Director of Undergraduate Programs, she changed her mind and decided to major in chemical engineering instead.  She has loved it ever since! She loves the community in chemical engineering, enjoys her classes, and is happy to have so many engaged and interesting people as classmates and friends.

Lauren is especially excited about the opportunities in the chemical engineering program to prepare herself for a career in the pharma industry.  She has two minors; one in biomanufacturing, which provides hands-on experience with pharmaceutical and biomanufacturing processes, and one in business.

During the summer of 2022, Lauren interned at Novartis Gene Therapy in downstream manufacturing and during the fall of 2022, she completed a co-op semester at Biogen, Inc. in cell culture development.  She has also been involved in undergraduate research; last year as a member of Prof. Orlin Velev’s research group and this year at the Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center (BTEC) working on the topic of protein precipitation.

Lauren especially enjoys professional service and leadership.  Before she was elected as the AIChE  President in January, she served as the VP of Industry Relations.  In that role, she worked on communicating with industry professionals and organizing company dinners where industrial representatives share presentations about their companies and network with chapter members.

Lauren is also a born leader.  In addition to serving as the AIChE President, she is President of the student chapter of the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) and is a CBE Student Ambassador!  Her goals for the AIChE chapter include increasing the number of student members who regularly attend events, as well as successfully competing in all national competitions this year.  She also aims to make the chapter a more welcoming and inclusive community and to increase the number of low-stress social events and activities.

The chapter will attend a Regional Meeting in Gainesville, FL, next month and will compete in both the ChemE Car and ChemE Jeopardy Competitions, with the goal of winning their way to the national competitions.  The chapter will also have a ChemE Cube team participating in the national competition this year.

Lauren adds that she hopes everyone in the ChE student community will get involved with the chapter and to contact her if they want additional information about the chapter and its activities. The student chapter website is at: https://www.ncsuaiche.com/#/ .