CHEE Welcomes New Faculty
The UA Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering welcomes four new faculty members in 2019.
Byron Hempel completed both his master’s and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering at the UA. Now, he’s joining the department as a lecturer.
“I first came to the UA four years ago and have fallen in love with so many different things,” he said. “CHEE’s excellence in water research, in addition to the hidden gems of nature in Tucson, drew me here. The progressive teaching nature of the department and college have captured me to stay long term.”
After two years as a postdoctoral associate at Yale University, CHEE alumna and former UA postdoctoral researcher and assistant research professor Vicky Karanikola returns as an assistant professor.
Karanikola’s focus is on creating membrane-based water purification technologies with high selectivity for removing targeted contaminants. During her previous time at the UA, she collaborated with Engineers Without Borders to provide water treatment methods to rural populations such as Native Americans living on reservations -- work she plans to continue in her new role. She currently serves as vice president of the EWB Mountain Region Steering Committee.
New CHEE assistant professor Suchol Savagatrup earned his PhD in chemical engineering from the University of California, San Diego in 2016, and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019.
His research lies at the intersection of soft materials design and device engineering, working primarily with materials such as polymers and emulsions.
Songtao Xie joined CHEE as a lecturer in January, after research and teaching roles at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, the Mayo Clinic’s Neural Imaging Lab and Texas A&M University. His past work involved investigating the development of electrochemical sensors for neurochemical detection.
In his new position, he’s looking forward to contributing to students’ success by helping them broaden their views of the world.