Goldfarb is on the hunt for fugitive carbon. Her laboratory transforms organic wastes – from dining hall food scraps to agricultural residues – into biofuels and sustainable carbon materials for water treatment, electrochemical processes and energy storage. Designing thermochemical unit operations for such waste-to-energy conversions is a key part of Goldfarb’s research. Yet such conversion processes leave trails of carbon behind in dilute process water streams and low-value solids. To make the integrated biorefinery economically viable, Goldfarb’s team is developing low-energy separation techniques to capture this carbon and using synthetic biology to upcycle molecules to high value products.
Goldfarb’s classroom is also a place of innovative research. She develops new hands-on activities to teach students fundamental engineering concepts. She has taught 16 different courses in her career and this fall she joined the CBE Unit Operations teaching team to guide students through the heat exchanger and continuous distillation experiments.
Goldfarb received her B.S. in chemical engineering from Northeastern University and Ph.D. from Brown University. She is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, and recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the 2022 Cornell Engineering James and Mary Tien Excellence in Teaching Award.