People Spotlights
All Spotlights
- Chemical Engineering Graduate Student (Manthiram Lab)
Spencer Delgado
I came to Caltech to pursue research in an environment where various fields thrive off of interdisciplinary work. Chemical engineering naturally invokes concepts from areas of biology, chemistry, and engineering. This creates spaces that flourish while pursuing both a fundamental understanding of science and applicable solutions to real-world problems.
- Chemical Engineering Graduate Student (Kornfield Lab)
Dennis Ko
My partner Lisa [Yee, BS '10,] was telling me every day how she had to reuse her N95 mask and her face shield. I'd been reading online that a lot of people were 3-D printing their own face shields, and I thought, 'You know what? I'll just learn how to do it.' I talked to my adviser, Julia Kornfield, and she said, 'Even if you only print five face shields, that's five people you managed to help.'
- Chemical Engineering Graduate Student (Ismagilov Lab)
Jenny Ji
Jenny Ji has been named a John Stafford SURF fellow.
- Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry
Frances Arnold
Only here could I convince students from very different disciplines—engineers, chemists, biochemists, molecular biologists, computational scientists—to throw their hat into this ring and this completely unexplored field, and contribute their creativity to this kooky idea that you could breed proteins like you can breed cats and dogs. And only here would I have been challenged to solve ever harder problems.
- Professor of Chemical Engineering; HHMI Investigator; Director of Center for Molecular and Cellular Medicine
Mikhail Shapiro
Shapiro lab at Caltech CCE develops technologies to image and control the function of cells deep inside the body. The key biophysical methods of investigation include ultrasound and magnetic resonance. These technologies take advantage of biomolecules with unusual physical properties allowing them to interact with sound waves and magnetic fields. Professor Shapiro’s team applies these tools to solve problems in synthetic biology, neuroscience, cancer, immunology, and the mammalian microbiome. Professor Shapiro has been recently named as an HHMI Investigator.
- Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry; William H. Hurt Scholar
Karthish Manthiram
Professor Manthiram received his Chemical Engineering BS from Stanford University and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. As a graduate student, Professor Manthiram developed transition-metal oxide hosts for redox-tunable plasmons and nanoparticle electrocatalysts for reducing carbon dioxide. During his postdoctoral research, he developed new anion-exchange ionomers. Professor Manthiram joined the MIT faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2017, and in 2021 he joined CCE as Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Manthiram Lab is focused on the molecular engineering of electrocatalysts for the synthesis of organic molecules, including pharmaceuticals, fuels, and commodity chemicals, using renewable feedstocks.