The following positions are available within the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University to all current ChBE undergraduate students. Subject to ChBE Chair approval.

Lehigh University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national or ethnic origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status. 

Summer

Undergraduate Research Assistant (1)

Professors Rangarajan and Baltrusaitis are looking for an undergraduate student for the summer to work on modeling the gas/surface reactions for a catalytic system that converts alkanes to olefins. This project will be computational and will cover concepts learned in a variety of ChE courses, viz., fluid mechanics/transport phenomena, heat transfer, reaction engineering, and numerical methods.  This work will be in collaboration with a group at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL). The position comes with financial support for the summer. There is the option to convert this project into a senior thesis. 

To inquire, contact Professor Baltrusaitis

Undergraduate Research Assistant (2)
"Microscopy of Hair Care Deposition Processes" supported by the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance:
The Gilchrist Lab is searching for an undergraduate researcher who will develop microfluidic platforms to explore the deposition and removal of various hair care products onto hair under various chemical and physical conditions. Students who are interested in consumer products and are willing to develop their knowledge in the areas of fabricating microfluidic devices, interfacial science, high speed confocal microscopy, and image analysis are encouraged to apply. Contact Professor Gilchrist for more details.
 
To inquire, contact Professor Gilchrist
"Exploring Active Granular Media" Summer Interns through the Mountaintop Summer Experience
"Exploring Active Granular Media" Summer Interns through the Mountaintop Summer Experience:
The Gilchrist Lab has developed magnetically responsive microrollers that will be the main focus of this project. The team will research existing granular applications and brainstorm new ideas, rapid-prototype their experiments, perform data analysis, and prepare presentations. Students will use a combination of resources, including particle synthesis and functionalization, laser-cutting, 3D-printing, glassworks, and Lego Robotics, to form, manipulate, and analyze the behavior of these materials. Students with engineering and physics backgrounds or interests, and students who are creative problem solvers with an entrepreneurial spirit, are encouraged to apply.
 
To inquire, contact Professor Gilchrist

Spring

Undergraduate Laboratory Assistant

The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering is looking for 1-2 students interested in setting up, designing, and running experiments in support of the department's teaching laboratories. 

To inquire: contact Professor Menicucci
Undergraduate Research Assistant (1)
This project will investigate the deposition of semiconductive polymer coatings to perform research with the Gilchrist and Reichmanis Laboratories. Student responsibilities include laboratory safety, experiments, characterization, and summarizing/reporting their findings to the research groups.  Students must complete the required HST safety training before entering the laboratory.
 
Undergraduate Research Assistant (2)
A team of researchers from ChBE (Gilchrist) and Bioengineering (Cheng) are scheduled to launch research samples into space for an experiment.The student working on this project will primarily 1) Laser cut glass slides and help assemble them into the devices that will hold our samples and 2) help run the code for image analysis of our images from our microscope.  Students will also have an opportunity to shadow researchers and develop their own experiments.
 
To inquire: contact Professor Gilchrist
Undergraduate Research Assistant (3)
Investigation of Buoyancy of Janus Particles: Janus particles are those that have one type of property on one half and another type of property on the other half. If the density of a particles is less than that of water, they would float at the surface of an air-water interface. My colleague, Professor Ferguson of the department of chemistry, discovered many years ago that not all particles of density less than that of water would float on the surface. Rather they would come near the surface and stay below the interface. Similar phenomenon is sometimes called as the “Moses Effect”. On the other hand, we discovered in our lab several years ago that certain bead with density more than that of the liquid do not sink all the way down. They become neutrally buoyant after descending in the liquid below.
 
Prof Ferguson and Professor Chaudhury are planning to do some research in these problem in order to understand thoroughly the reasons behind these unique findings. The student will be jointly supervised by both professors.
 
To inquire: contact Professor Chaudhury

 

Undergraduate Research Assistant (4)
Objective: Evaluate the use of renewable electrical energy in high temperature processes
 
Expectations: Explore the Mass and Energy balances, thermodynamic equilibrium and simple kinetics of important endothermic processes to minimize environmental impact.
 
Expected background: Junior/senior level to be able to understand what drives current chemical processes in a fundamental basis. A very motivated rising sophomore could also workout.
 
Project: Transforming electrical energy into high temperature is a very efficient use of energy either captured from the sun (solar cells) or wind (wind farms). Three processes are of immediate interest:
Hydrogen production by steam methane reforming (with CO 2 Capture) CH 4 + H 2 O=CO 2 + 4H 2 (1000C). Hydrogen is critical for ammonia fertilizer production, clean steel production, hydrogen cars and other processes such as glass production. Currently steam reformers are enormous structures (40x40x40 ft) that burn large amounts of methane. An electric regenerative process reduces the size to 10x4x4 ft. Initial calculations indicate this to be highly feasible.
 
Cement production: Cement production is responsible for about 10% of industrial CO 2 . This is due to the need to decompose Limestone to CO 2 and provide enough heat to raise the temperature of CaO and
SiO 2 to ~1300C to form the clinker that when ground will yield the hydraulic cement used in construction. The flue gases of the current process contain up to 30% CO 2 but separation is still needed. Replacing the high temperature flame by an electric will produce pure CO 2 ready for sequestration. (This already being used
 
Hydrocarbon Dehydrogenation: These are high temperature/low pressure endothermic processes such as ethane dehydrogenation to produce ethylene and hydrogen, ethylbenzene to styrene and hydrogen. These are building blocks for plastics such as polyethylene and polystyrene as well as potentially biodegradable polymers. Again, the issue is to use electrical heat with no CO 2 emissions.
 
To inquire: contact Professor Caram
Undergraduate Research Assistant (5)

Green Electrocatalytic Upgrading of Bio-Derived Feedstocks: The McIntosh and Snyder labs are looking for motivated undergraduate students (up to two) to work on a novel approach to electrocatalysis . The goal is to use renewable energy to upgrade plant-derived molecules into useful chemicals that can, for example, be used as replacements for fossil fuel derived plastics.

To inquire: contact Professor McIntosh

Undergraduate Research Assistant (6)
Semiconducting polymer-insulating polymer blends of varying compositions will be fabricated via blade coating and spin coating to explore the impact of solution processing on thin polymer film characteristics. Characterization methods will include optical microscopy evaluation, UV-vis and FT-IR spectroscopic studies. Polymer films will also be fabricated on transistor device substrates to explore impact of blends/processing on macroscopic device performance.
 
To inquire: contact Professor Reichmanis
Undergraduate Research Assistant (7)
Mixed conduction polymers – from electrochemical characterization to devices: Carboxylated semiconducting polymers will be characterized for their electrochemical behavior to serve as the active material in organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). Thin films of the mixed conduction polymers will be fabricated via blade coating and spin coating to explore the impact of processing on thin polymer film characteristics and device performance. Characterization methods will include a range of spectroscopic studies, coupled with in situ electrochemical analysis.
 
To inquire: contact Professor Reichmanis
Undergraduate Research Assistant (8)
Composite electrodes for next generation energy storage: Organic/inorganic hybrid electrodes for high capacity Li-ion batteries will be fabricated and characterized using electrochemical and spectroscopic tools. Experimental research may encompass the synthesis of polymers that may undergo non-bonding crosslinking that allow for tuning of processing and chemical parameters to alleviate mechanical stress and inhibit deformation both at the particle and electrode level; and exploration of materials chemistries that allow for the fabrication of resilient interfaces in a cost-effective and scalable approach.
 
To inquire: contact Professor Reichmanis
Undergraduate Research Assistant (9)
(for credit or work study, Up to two students: ChBE major interested in learning and contributing to topics related to design, operation of oxygen concentrators in an experimental setup.  The project will involve learning how to operate a cyclic pressure swing adsorption system using machine learning methods, conducting either experimental studies or simulation studies to optimize the performance and demonstrate high medical grade oxygen production in a test setup. 
 
To inquire: contact Professor Kothare
Undergraduate Research Assistant (10)

This project aims to create a lab-on-a-chip system for DNA manipulation using open source software and hardware. The system, called ”Purple Drop,” will sequence the movement, heating, and cooling of droplets containing DNA for precise control and information processing. The project will impact the field of computing and contribute to communities in biomolecular engineering, automation, computer arithmetic, and hardware integration. Students in chemical engineering, computer science,  biology, or bioengineering majors are encouraged to apply. Background and interest in integrating hardware and software (python, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, etc.) with biological systems (synthetic DNA, liquid drop movement, etc.) is a plus. Students to work under the advisement of Professor Kothare and Dr. Mark Arnold.

To inquire: contact Professor Kothare

Undergraduate Research Assistant (11)
The Brown and McIntosh labs are looking for an undergraduate research assistant to work on a project focused on developing new technologies to enable cultured meat production. The student working on this project will work closely with a graduate student to synthesize and characterize reagents and demonstrate efficacy. The student will learn a variety of laboratory techniques including dynamic light scattering, microscopy, and cell culture. 
 
To inquire, please contact Professor Brown
Undergraduate Research Assistant (12)

Rangarajan group is looking for one or two students interested in computational research into problems in modeling catalytic reaction systems. The projects are expected to be more than one semester long; the expectation is that the student will start in spring, work over the summer (which will be funded through REU grants), and seriously consider continuing in their senior year (as an undergrad thesis) to maximize the chance for a publication. There are two types of projects on offer: (1) reaction/reactor modeling of gas phase conversion of methane to higher hydrocarbons (this will initially start with working alongside a senior undergrad and in collaboration with NREL, a national lab in Colorado); (2) Computational analysis of chemistries involved in hydrogen carriers for storing and transporting variable renewable energy. Interest in programming is necessary for both projects (CHE 201 provides the required computing background). 

To inquire: contact Professor Rangarajan

Undergraduate Research Assistant (13)

The Gartner Group is looking for an undergraduate researcher to study environmentally-friendly materials for bioelectronic devices. Typical wearable bioelectronics, for example wearable temperature or sweat sensors, rely on silicon-based polymers that act as a substrate material between the skin and the metal conductors in the device. We want to use computational modeling techniques to evaluate alternative substrate materials that might be "greener" than the current state of the art, and could be made from renewable sources and/or introduce biodegradable function to the device. We will use molecular modeling techniques to study how these alternate materials behave in a typical operating environment. Students will gain expertise in Python, high-performance computing, materials modeling, and polymer science & engineering. 

To inquire, please contact Professor Gartner

CHE395/495 Course Prep Assistant
The student will assist in collecting and preparing PYTHON modules for the data science course CHE395/495 offered in spring 2024. Prior experience in PYTHON, github, jupyter notebook, MATLAB will be needed. Prior background data science is not required. 
This position can be a work study or apprentice TA appointment. 
 
To inquire: contact Professor Kothare
CHE201 Teaching Assistant

Professor Gartner is seeking an undergraduate teaching assistant for CHE 210 (Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics) in Spring 2024. The TA will review the course content, hold weekly office hours, and assist in grading and other tasks throughout the semester.

To inquire, please contact Professor Gartner

CHE211 Teaching Assistant
Professor Brown is seeking an undergraduate teaching assistant for CHE 211 (Chemical Reactor Design) in Spring 2024. The TA will review the current material, hold weekly office hours, and assist in other tasks throughout the semester. 
 
To inquire, please contact Professor Brown
Undergraduate Office Assistant - FILLED FOR SP24

General duties include but are not limited to designing and editing marketing materials, photography, videography, social media outreach, event preparations, special projects for department events and other duties as assigned. Photoshop, videography, and social media skills preferred. ~5-6 hours per week. Student(s) will work directly with Department Coordinator. 

To inquire: contact Jamie Lenhart