The Gregory and Kimberly Ogden Endowment Fund in Undergraduate Research will support new opportunities for ChemE undergraduate students to work in labs and gain invaluable experience in chemical engineering research.

Kim and Greg Ogden (center) visit UW campus in December 2024 to give special seminars. They are joined by ChemE interim chair James Carothers (left) and chemical engineering professor John Berg (right).

University of Washington Chemical Engineering alumnus Greg Ogden (B.S. ‘86) knew that he wanted to be a chemical engineer ever since he was very young. Pursuing his acceptance to UW was, for Greg, an obvious choice in moving toward his ideal future career. In his first year as a UW student, Greg got a summer job with the football stadium crew where he worked painting Husky helmets and sanding the bleachers. It was a fun job to have as a student, but Greg yearned for a job with an engineering focus that aligned with his ChemE education.

The following year, Greg was offered an opportunity to work as an undergraduate researcher in the Surface and Colloids Lab under ChemE professor John Berg. He worked alongside Berg and ChemE graduate students conducting experiments in surface tension for the remaining three years of his undergraduate degree.

After graduating from UW, Greg earned a master’s in chemical engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1988. He worked in industry for several years in air pollution control and nuclear waste remediation and earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona in 2002. Greg is currently a research professor in the UA Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, where he has been a faculty member for over 20 years. His wife Kimberly Ogden is also a professor in the same department.

Greg credits the early research experience he had and being supported by John Berg and other ChemE faculty as invaluable to his subsequent career success. The Gregory and Kimberly Ogden Endowment Fund in Chemical Engineering was started to honor the impact that Berg had on Greg’s ChemE experience and continue incentivizing undergraduate chemical engineering students to engage in hands-on research.

“Dr. Berg continually encouraged me to try different procedures and understand the basic phenomena in question. During my undergraduate years at UW, he nurtured my interest in and love of hands-on research that has continued to this day.”