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ChemE at STEM Pitch Night

By Ro Stastny
February 4, 2025

Engage’s STEM Pitch Night challenges UW graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics majors to condense their research into three-minute talks geared toward the general public.

This year, ChemE will be represented among the 12 STEM disciplines at STEM Pitch Night by current Ph.D. students Jackson Comes and Ayça Ersoy. This event provides graduate students an opportunity to practice skills in science communication for a broad audience.

The event will be held on February 10 at 6 p.m. at Burke-Gilman Brewing Company, and is open to attendees of all ages and backgrounds.

Comes and Ersoy shared glimpses of their research topics for their upcoming talks.

Rewriting photosynthesis: Engineering microbes for innovation

 

 
Man giving a thumbs up while standing in front of a ferris wheel

Jackson Comes

“Traditional chemical production processes rely on fossil fuels and release greenhouse gases like CO2 into the atmosphere. Photosynthetic organisms, like plants, convert CO2 into useful chemicals and products. This means they are actively removing carbon from the atmosphere, reducing the effect of carbon emissions on climate change. My research is in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. These methods can have positive impacts on the way we produce chemicals by harnessing nature’s code–DNA. Biochemical production can reduce energy consumption, is safer and less toxic, and offers the potential to create new products.”

Jackson Comes is a first-year chemical engineering Ph.D. student and member of the Carothers Research Group.

 

Enhanced transport and assembly of paramagnetic colloids

 

Simulations of paramagnetic particles

Simulations of paramagnetic particles. Source: Soft Matter, 2019,15, 6677-6689

 
Woman wearing a jacket standing in on beach

Ayça Ersoy

“Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) are easily controlled and separated remotely using external magnetic fields. This feature makes them extremely effective for a variety of applications, such as targeted drug delivery or metal ion separations. Understanding the magnetophoretic transport properties of MNPs and developing predictive models is crucial to implementing MNPs for these applications. In my research, I investigate the structure and magnetophoretic transport of concentrated MNP suspensions using coarse-grained Brownian dynamics simulations.”

Ayça Ersoy is a third-year chemical engineering Ph.D. student and member of the Z Lab.