The Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Graduate Women’s Group (CBE Women), which promotes female affiliates within the Smith School for leadership, education and entrepreneurship, among other activities, received the 2024 Student Organization Award’ from the Cornell Engineering Alumni Association, recognizing it as one of the exemplary organizations dedicated to supporting the student community.

CBE Women has 48 members and organizes at least one event per month, alternating between professional development, entrepreneurship, outreach and social events, with support from the Smith School and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly.

CBE Women is proud to share the following update on some of its recent activities:

Professional Development

  • CBE Women invited its former president, Lakshmi O’Dwyer, customer marketing specialist at BASF, to gain insights from her career paths after graduate school.
  • CBE Women, in collaboration with the Chemical Engineering Graduate Student Association, organized an industry tour of Corning, Inc. A group of 15 graduate students visited the diesel plant where they learned about making substrates and filters for vehicles and saw the R&D facility to learn about their developments of fiber optics and other glass materials.
  • The Lisa Walker Travel Award was granted to three graduate students – Youlim Ha, Chia-Yi Lin, and Shreshtha Dhankar – to support future travel to conferences and workshops, fostering future career opportunities and motivating research directions. CBE Women would like to thank alumna Lisa Walker for her generous contribution, which supports CBE female graduate students every year.
  • CBE Women launched the ‘Future Faculty Workshops’ tailored for post-doctoral associates exploring paths toward independent careers in academia. Professors Matthew Paszek and Matthew DeLisa were invited to give guidance and discussions on the academic job market and writing a research statement. Professor Shuwen Yue was invited to lead a workshop on how to start a lab and navigate academia as an early career scientist.

Entrepreneurship

CBE Women hosted an entrepreneurship event with Romy Fain, CEO of Heat Inverse, and professor of practice Brian Bauer. The speakers shared their entrepreneurial journeys and introduced resources available at Cornell and in the Ithaca area.

Outreach

Seventeen high-school students and their parents attended the ‘Women’s Outreach in Materials, Energy, and Nanobiotechnology’ event, hosted to inspire interest in chemical engineering through lab demonstrations and informational talks and panels. During the day-long event, participants completed four activities: DNA extraction of strawberries and yeast catalysis to make elephant toothpaste, polymer crosslinking for making slime and bath bombs, product manufacturing with ice cream as the output, and surface tension manipulation yielding milky fireworks out of soap, food dye, and milk.

Social

  • An apple picking event was a great opportunity for networking with the community, and included pumpkin carving and a holiday party, where students could take a short break from their labs and showcase their craftsmanship.
  • The group enjoyed sweets together at the Valentine’s Day Social and Ice Cream Social.