CBE Welcomes New Board Members: Auernik, Norman & Robertson

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering is adding three new members to its advisory board. These three alumni are successful in industry and have graciously dedicated their time to supporting department missions and projects, such as recruiting diverse talent or sponsoring a senior design project. Read on to learn more about our new members Kate, Carnley and Stephenie.

Kate Auernik (M.S. ’06, Ph.D. ’09) earned a B.S in chemical engineering at the University of Notre Dame and began her career in biopharma working for Merck supporting commercial viral vaccine manufacturing before entering the Ph.D. program at NC State where she worked under the direction of Dr. Robert Kelly. After NC State, Kate spent over 10 years supporting commercialization and/or technical transfer efforts in various technical and project management capacities for both clinical and commercial vaccine, mAb, regenerative medicine, and gene therapy products at companies including Merck, Humacyte, Takeda and Pfizer. She currently works for Pfizer Global Supply, based in Sanford, NC, as the Head of Technical Operations – Validation.

Carnley Norman (Ph.D. ’00) earned a B.S. in chemistry from Morehouse College and a B.S. in chemical engineering from Georgia Tech before entering the Ph.D. program where he worked under the direction of Dr. P.K. Lim. Carnley has over 20 years of therapeutic protein and vaccine drug substance process development, characterization, technology transfer and manufacturing experience. He has held senior engineer positions at a number of pharmaceutical companies including Merck, Amgen, Medimmune and Novartis. Carnley held a number of executive roles at KBI Biopharma including Director of Downstream Process Development, VP of Manufacturing Operations and VP of Global Process Development. In 2021 Carnley was named VP and Head of Manufacturing Sciences and Technology at Kite Pharma.

Stephenie Robertson (B.S. ’95) initially served in the U.S. Army as an Engineer Officer. She then earned an M.S. in chemical engineering at the University of South Florida. Stephenie started in industry as a chemical process engineer at Ajinomoto Amino Science, and soon took on management roles as a Separation Department Supervisor and then Head of Production. She next went to Novartis (now Seqirus) and took on a series of management positions, eventually being named Director, Quality. In 2018 Stephenie joined FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies as Senior Director, Operations, and in 2020 was named Vice President, Operations.

CBE is grateful to four outgoing members for their service. Rotating off of the advisory board are Jeff Dugas B.S. ’90, Yang Luo Ph.D. ‘94, Nate Miranda Ph.D. ‘94, and Billy Willis B.S. ‘76, Ph.D. ‘81.