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John Tornabene

BS Chemical Engineering, Engineering and Sustainability track (2019)

John is a manufacturing process engineer at Northrop Grumman’s BWI plant

Sudheer Sami

MS Chemical Engineering (2008) 

Sudheer currently works at Bayer Health Care at Berkeley, CA. He previously worked at Genentech, Biomarin, etc. 

Michael Zhang

PhD Chemical Engineering (2021)

Michael joined Bristol Myers Squibb as a Scientist in Dec 2020 to develop new strategies for improving CAR T-cell cancer therapies.

The award is open to students who are pursuing a graduate degree in the chemical sciences and are from groups traditionally underrepresented in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Namely, underrepresented minorities include African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans. The goal of this award is to advance the career and professional development of graduate students. The professional development award will defray the cost of any online workshops, courses, virtual conferences, and/or events that will assist URM graduate students in the chemical sciences with their career and professional development goals. Each award will be for up to $2000 of eligible expenses based on the review of materials.

The Certificate of Merit program recognizes Division members who are making their first ENVR presentation at an ACS national meeting. Jahir's presentation was attended by Division volunteers and judged to be of high quality in both intellectual merit and presentation style. The Division of Environmental Chemistry of the ACS believes this research actively contributes to the efforts of the Division to better understand and protect the environment. 

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | OCTOBER 28, 2020 | MEGAN HANKS 

Blaney said that he was honored and humbled to receive the 2020 George L. Braude Award for his efforts to mentor undergraduate and graduate students in research. During his lecture, Blaney emphasized the impact of his own mentors on his mentoring approach, and said that his mentors Arup SenGupta (Lehigh University), Desmond Lawler (University of Texas at Austin), and Lynn Katz (University of Texas at Austin) changed his life. Blaney has incorporated their advice and his own experiences into his mentoring approach at UMBC. “Seeing my students succeed is the most gratifying aspect of being a professor,” he says. 

Even though the event could not be held in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of Blaney’s students were able to attend the virtual lecture. Blaney noted that the presence of his students made the celebration even more special. Upon receiving the Braude Award, Blaney emphasized that “this is our award” to his students. 

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Babu Raman

Babu Raman is currently the Strategy Leader for Bioengineering and Bioprocessing R&D at Corteva™ Agriscience, Indianapolis, IN. Babu obtained his PhD in Biochemical Engineering from University of Maryland Baltimore County and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Oak Ridge National Lab, prior to joining Corteva (then Dow AgroSciences) in 2011. At Corteva, Babu led the development and establishment of the Systems Biology program for targeted engineering of microbial systems for natural product biosynthesis. Subsequently, he served as the Engineering & Systems Biology Platform Leader, responsible for the continued development and deployment of core technologies in automated and high-throughput strain engineering. Babu is passionate about emerging technologies and is actively engaged in identifying and brining in external technologies for accelerating internal R&D efforts.