Author: Cyndi Perkins

Consumer Product Manufacturing Team Shares Enterprise Success Story

Three students from the CPM Enterprise Team.
From left, Zoe Kumm, Madeline Johnson, and Jacqui Foreman in their Consumer Product Manufacturing Enterprise OneTumbler team photo in spring 2024. (Photo courtesy CPM Enterprise)

Michigan Tech Enterprise Teams lead to industry partnerships and the kind of experience that employers are looking for. In the case of a Consumer Product Manufacturing Enterprise (CPM) team, the research they conducted led to publication and fewer single-use beverage containers on campus.

CPM enterprise works on multiple projects for multiple years, with the group breaking out into subteams. For their project, the CPM OneTumbler team partnered with campus housing to give all first-year Huskies in 2023’s incoming class a Michigan Tech OneTumbler, as a way to promote sustainability on campus.

Interdisciplinary Health Research Engineered to Benefit Communities

Caryn Heldt in front of the Husky Statue.
Caryn Heldt and other researchers at Tech are working on cross-disciplinary approaches to achieve impactful breakthroughs for improved public health. This photo was taken before completion of the new H-STEM Complex on campus, which has further accelerated opportunities for collaboration.

Chemical Engineering Professor Caryn Heldt exemplifies how research at Michigan Tech crosses disciplines—and crosses the globe. The James and Lorna Mack Chair in Continuous Processing, Heldt is also an affiliate professor in biological sciences at Michigan Tech, and directs the University’s Health Research Institute.

Aside from the benefit to communities, internships and similar collaborations benefit Michigan Tech researchers, said Heldt. “International partnerships are really key to expanding your research network, research ideas, and to be able to have your research out into industry and be applied.”

Chemical Engineering Dedicates CITGO Senior Design Studio

Michigan Tech’s Department of Chemical Engineering, along with representatives of CITGO Petroleum Corporation, dedicated a new space for students in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Building on Friday, September 27. The CITGO Senior Design Studio will give students a facility with state-of-the-art computing technology to collaborate and work on projects.

The CITGO-Michigan Tech partnership came about through Carlos Jordá, CEO and president of CITGO, who is a 1971 chemical engineering graduate of Michigan Tech.

CITGO representatives Phil Pribnow, Lemont GM of Engineering and Business Services, and Brett Wiltshire, Lemont Manager of Human Resources, were present for the ribbon cutting of the new facility. Also present was Professor Emeritus Bruce Barna ’70, who was a long-time instructor and mentor for students in senior design.


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Machine Learning Model Aims to Break Cubic Scaling Barrier of Quantum Mechanics

Susanta Ghosh
Susanta Ghosh is co-author on a paper recently published in npj Computational Materials.

Susanta Ghosh, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is co-author on a paper titled Electronic structure prediction of multi-million atom systems through uncertainty quantification enabled transfer learning, which was published August 12 in npj Computational Materials.

From Michigan Tech to Mars: First-Year Engineering Lecture Speaker Ready to Inspire Huskies

Jessica Elwell in front of the Mars Curiosity Rover mockup at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rover is in the same class as the Mars Perseverance Rover, which carried the experimental device MOXIE aboard to successfully convert carbon dioxide to oxygen.
(All images courtesy Jessica Elwell)

A chemical engineer who almost chose music as a major and went on to work on a project that was named one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2023 has been selected as speaker for the First Year Engineering Lecture Series. 

Her talk takes place at 6 p.m. Monday, Aug. 26, in Michigan Tech’s Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts.