The 2023 Schoenborn Research Symposium was outstanding!

The Schoenborn Research Symposium is a showcase for the talent and accomplishments of our graduate and undergraduate student researchers, featuring formal talks and poster presentations.

The Symposium is divided into two sections. During the first section, senior-level PhD candidates make formal presentations about their research and the associated results. During the second section, mid-level PhD students and a few exceptional undergraduates make informal poster presentations about their research. Faculty judges select winners of the formal presentations and graduate student voters select the poster presentation winners.

The Symposium activities include a Keynote address by an alumnus of the department and presentation of the Praxair Exceptional Teaching Assistant Award.

Bruce Locke, Chair and Distinguished Research Professor of Chemical & Biomedical Engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering was the keynote speaker. Bruce’s talk was, “Some Highlights of My Journeys through Southeast Asia, the USA, and Europe in Life, Education, Engineering Research, and Administration.”

The 2023 award winners are:

Formal Presentations

1st Place (Biotechnology): Ryan Kilgore (advised by Menegatti) “Peptide-Based Affinity Ligands for the Platform Purification of Next-Generation Biotherapeutics and Gene-Editing Products”

2nd Place (Biotechnology): R. Chris Estridge (Advised by Keung) “UBE3A Loss Broadly Impacts the Composition and Cell-Type Specific Gene Expression of Human Cerebral Organoids”

1st Place (Materials, Catalysis and Computation): Mariam Sohail (advised by Khan) “Cellulose Acetate Stabilized Pickering Emulsions for Agricultural Applications”

2nd Place  (Materials, Catalysis and Computation): Sherafghan Iftikhar (advised by Li) “Sustainable Conversion of Carbon Dioxide and Shale Gas via a Thermochemical Cyclic Redox Scheme”

Poster Presentations

1st Place (Biotechnology): Hrishikesh Mane (advised by San Miguel) “Understanding the Relation Between Neuronal Activity, Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) and Oxidative Stress Resistance Using C. Elegans”

1st Place (Computational): Michael Bergman (advised by Hall) “A Computational Approach to Designing Plastic-Binding Peptides”

1st Place (Materials): Abhirup Basu (advised by Velev) “ ‘Moonwalking’ Active Colloidal Rollers with Organized Nanoparticle Chains”

2nd Place (Materials): Kevser Hilal Bektas (advised by Keung and Rao Li) “A Novel System for High-temperature Thermal Energy Storage: Oxide-Molten Salt Composites (OMS)”

Undergraduate Poster Winner: Katie Traynelis (advised by Keung and Rao) “High Throughput Mapping of Epigenetic Enzyme Activity”

The Linde Exceptional Teaching Assistant Award was presented to Stephanie Atkinson, for her excellence as a teaching assistant in CHE 205, Chemical Process Principles, for Milad Abolhasani and Artem Rumyantsev during the 2023 spring semester. Sindee Simon, the CBE Department Head and Distinguished Professor, presented Stephanie with the Linde Award; a check in the amount of $500.

We gratefully acknowledge a gift from Linde for logistical support of the symposium. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Edward M. Schoenborn Graduate Student Fund endowment, established by Russ and Susie O’Dell, which funds the monetary prize for oral and poster award winners.

The complete program of the 2023 Symposium, including abstracts of the presentations and a packet of CBE graduate student resumes is available here.