The 2025 CBE Schoenborn Research Symposium & Exhibition was held on Thursday, September 11th and Friday, September 12th at the StateView Hotel on NC State’s Centennial Campus. The symposium showcases the talent and accomplishments of Ph.D. graduate students in the department. It features two research poster sessions, a 3-Minute Thesis Competition, and several alumni speakers.

A special thanks our keynote speaker: Hank Ashbaugh (BS ’92), professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Tulane University; and our young alumni panel speakers: Ria Corder (PhD ’20), assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, Stephanie Lam (PhD ’14), Scientific Leader at GSK, and Salvatore Luiso, Senior Process Engineer at ASM.

Student Winners

Poster Session I (2^nd and 3^rd Year PhD & Undergrads)
Bioengineering/Biotech: Aditi Dey Poonam (Wei)
Catalysis & Kinetics: Christopher Obi (Li)
Computational: Arpan Tapdiya (Hall)
Materials 1^st: Katherine Ernst (Khan)
Materials 2^nd: Seonghyeon Parker (Veleve/Khan/Hsiao)
Undergraduate: Emily Palmer (Simon)

Poster Session II (4^th and 5^th Year PhD)
Bioengineering/Biotech: John Cheadle (Crook/Khan)
Catalysis & Kinetics: Alireza Velayati (Abolhasani)
Computational: Corey Febo (Hall)
Materials 1^st: Cormak Weeks (Tsiao/Tao)
Materials 2^nd: Nikolai Muhkin (Abolhasani)

3-Minute Thesis Competition
1^st place: Aaron Frye (Li)
2^nd place: Corey Febo (Hall)
3^rd place: Karthik Sinha (Rumyantsev)

Also presented at the symposium was the Linde Exceptional Teaching Assistant Award for the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 recipients. William Smith was the Fall 2024 awardee for Prof. Cooper’s CHE 225 class and Daniel Addington was the Spring 2025 awardee for Prof. Tang’s CHE 435/525 class.

The 2025 CBE Schoenborn Research Symposium & Exhibition would not be possible without the help of all the postdocs, research scholars, alumni, faculty and friends that helped judge; Russ and Susie O’Dell for endowing the Edward M. Schoenborn Student Fund; and Linde for supporting the awards.