Author: Heather Powers

Heather Powers is a Associate Director of Digital Content in University Marketing and Communications (UMC) at Michigan Technological University. Powers is responsible for all content aspects of UMC's recruitment and reputation web properties and proactively improves and maintains quality, benchmarks, and tests to innovate key sites and pages to meet integrated marketing, brand awareness and reputation, and recruitment goals.

COE Annual Lecture Series Features Inspiring ChE Alumna

More than 800 first-year engineering Huskies turned out for the College of Engineering’s (COE’s) annual lecture, designed especially for them. The First-Year Engineering Series lecture took place Monday, Aug. 26, at the Rozsa Center, hosted by the Department of Engineering Fundamentals. This year’s featured lecturer was chemical engineering alumna Jessica Elwell ’02 ’03.

“Jessica told the fascinating and inspiring story of how she and her team at OxEon Energy worked with NASA to figure out how to make oxygen from in-situ resources on Mars (Yes, Mars!),” said COE Dean Michelle Scherer. “She also shared her journey to being chief operating officer at OxEon and how she has been able to focus her work on her passion of converting carbon dioxide into oxygen and sustainable fuels.”

Scherer said Elwell’s words of wisdom reinforced why it’s important to move outside the comfort zone to try new things and to remember that engineering design requires failing many times until you find the solution.

Read more about the lecture series and Elwell’s accomplishments on the College of Engineering Blog.

New Funding

Robert Handler (ChE/GLRC), the principal investigator on a project, received a $262,537 research and development co-op joint agreement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service.

The project is titled “Evaluating the Sustainable Production of Engineered BioCarbon for Coal Combustion Residual (CCR) Remediation from Fuel Reduction Treatments in the Superior National Forest (SNF).”

This is a potential three-year project.

In the News

Stephen Techtmann and Lindsay Putman (both BioSci) were quoted by The Daily Mining Gazette in a story highlighting the BioPROTEIN research project at Michigan Tech.

David Shonnard (ChE), Rebecca Ong (ChE), and Jeff Naber (MAE) were mentioned as members of the research team for the project, which uses bacteria to break waste plastics down to be recycled into useful products, including a protein powder similar to vegemite, lubricants, gases and candle wax. The project was featured in MTU’s 2022 Research Magazine.