The annual AIChE convention was held in San Diego in October and our talented students placed in several categories.
The UF AIChE chapter won first-place for Outstanding Student AIChE Chapter for the 2023-2024 school year.
Undergraduate Awards and Notable Achievements:
Cecilia Rodriguez won a second-place poster award in Food, Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology. Her presentation was titled, “Evaluating Gene Integration Efficiency in IAL-PiD2, a Plodia interpunctella cell line.”
Dominick Szabo won a third-place poster award in Computing and Process Control III, presented by Florida Atlantic University and Omega Chi Epsilon. His presentation was titled, “Investigating the Effect of Dispersity on the Conformation and Dynamics of Semiflexible Polymer Melts: Insights from Molecular Dynamics Simulations.”
Isabella Baccari won the 2023-2024 First Year Student Recognition Award.
Camille Grimald received the 2023-2024 Donald F. Othmer Second Year Student Academic Excellence Award.
Sarah Flannery and Flynn Baliton presented a workshop “Building a 3-Pillar Outreach Program for Your Student Chapter.”
Graduate Awards and Notable Achievements
Ph.D. student Mohammed Al Otmi was selected to participate in the graduate student excellence awards session for the Materials Engineering and Sciences Division, where he presented a talk.
ChemE Cube Achievements
The ChemE Cube team qualified for the competition for the first time this year with an innovative design concept. The goal of the competition was to design and build a 1-cubic-foot plant that can remove carbon dioxide from the air using the least amount of money possible.
“The team successfully built a working prototype and excelled. We are excited to continue improving our design and hopefully compete again next year,” said Lilu Funkenbusch, Ph.D., instructional assistant professor and the team’s faculty advisor.
The ChemECube students won first place in the Ad Competition and second place in the Cheapest Cube Competition. For the Ad competition, students created a short video selling their cube. The “cheapest cube” category simply means that their cube cost less to make than most of the other competitors. You can see their video here.
The group consisted of Justin Atlas (team captain), Sanaa Lehri, Milana Ivanenko, Abigail Andal and Rebecca Vosilla.
