Chemical engineering spring 2019 graduate profiles

Emily Buhle

Tell us a little about yourself and your time here at UIC.

I am 24 years old and I lived in Taiwan for the first 10 years of my life. I’ve been living in Chicago for almost five years. During my time at UIC I was a part of a social sorority, a member of the badminton club team, and I also spent a few semesters with the Engineering World Health Club. During my undergraduate education, I completed a seven-month co-op with Baker Engineering and Risk Consults. During the summer following my co-op, I joined the Smith and Burgess internship program. For the past few months my team and I have been working hard on our senior design project, which was to design and implement a process to convert woodchips and sawdust into biodiesel.

What was your favorite class or experience in the College of Engineering?

My favorite class was CHE 312 Transport Phenomena II. I really enjoyed that course because it was the first class I took where I was able to relate the material of heat and mass transfer to real life phenomena.

What is your new job/opportunity and what will you be doing?

I will be a process safety consultant at Baker Engineering and Risk Consultants. My role will be to conduct facility siting studies to ensure that facilities with hazardous materials are operating safely.

How do you feel UIC has helped prepare you for this job and the rest of your engineering career?

UIC has given me a great deal of opportunities to put myself out there and get involved with industry. The College of Engineering organized many events for networking which helped me land my first job out of college!

Michael Donnelly

Tell us a little about yourself and your time here at UIC.

I am from Burr Ridge, Illinois, and went to Nazareth Academy. I was involved in the Guaranteed Paid Internship Program at UIC where I was able to work in Dr. Linninger’s lab, Laboratory for Product and Process Design, in the summer. This internship allowed me to get me some experience and soon I was able to get two additional internships at Exelon.

What was your favorite class or experience in the College of Engineering?

My favorite class at UIC was CHE 341 Chemical Process Control. This class gave me exposure to more industrial applications.

What is your new job/opportunity and what will you be doing?

I will be working at Braidwood Nuclear Plant in design engineering.

How do you feel UIC has helped prepare you for this job and the rest of your engineering career?

The professors at UIC were very helpful and helped me a lot in understanding applications to chemical engineering. In addition, the Guaranteed Paid Internship Program helped me obtain experience early on in my academic career, which then led to me obtaining a good internship and fortunately a full-time job.

Ebin Joseph

Tell us a little about yourself and your time here at UIC.

I immigrated here from India in 2006. I jumped straight into the fourth grade when I arrived and started to enjoy school because of the quality of education here. I decided to further my education at UIC in chemical engineering. I loved engineering as a concept and always saw myself as a problem-solver. I extended this mentality to the various organizations I have led through my undergraduate career, including the College of Cycling, Residence Hall Association, and most recently, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. I was also fortunate enough to work at Fermilab for more than a year in the R&D department. All these experiences helped me grow into the engineer I am today.

What was your favorite class or experience in the College of Engineering?

After my co-op experience at Fermilab, I embraced academia with renewed vigor. The second semester of junior year had some of my favorite classes, such as CHE 321 Chemical Reaction Engineering and CHE 410 Transport Phenomena. During this time, I realized how versatile and important is the skillset and the knowledge base of an engineer.

What is your new job/opportunity and what will you be doing?

Because of how much this major has improved my problem-solving mindset and scientific thinking, I have decided to stay on this path for a PhD at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I find the idea of being at the forefront of understanding and solving the world’s most prominent problems to be very attractive.

How do you feel UIC has helped prepare you for this job and the rest of your engineering career?UIC and especially the chemical engineering department helped cultivate and shape a young mind by using the solutions of today to solve the problems of tomorrow. I am always grateful for the principles and fundamentals of engineering that were imbued into our class by the professors and graduate students. This is a field of study I enjoyed so much that I signed up for an extra five years of it.