Darren Lipomi is a professor of nanoengineering, chemical engineering, and materials Science at UC San Diego. He is also the Associate Dean for Students and the Faculty Director of the IDEA Engineering Student Center at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD. He is the incoming chair of Chemical Engineering at University of Rochester, scheduled to begin his term in July!

Darren earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a minor in physics at Boston University, and his PhD in chemistry at Harvard with Prof. George M. Whitesides. He did his Postdoc with Zhenan Bao at Stanford, and started his independent career at UCSD in 2012. His research interests include the chemistry of organic materials, mechanical properties of semiconducting polymers for flexible solar cells, biomechanical sensors, and phenomena at the intersection of materials chemistry with human perception and cognition. He is the recipient of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator award, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and the PECASE award. Darren hosts a podcast, “Molecular Podcasting with Darren Lipomi” and YouTube channel with over 16 k subscribers and nearly 1 million views. It is a pleasure to welcome Darren Lipomi to PodCAT!

Prof. Julie Rorrer is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Washington. She obtained her doctoral degree from the University of California at Berkeley, where she investigated etherification catalysis under the guidance of Profs. Alexis T. Bell and Dean Toste. She then performed postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the guidance of Prof. Yuriy Roman-Leshkov with funding from a Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship. She was also recently recognized for her early career achievements and contributions to the field of chemical engineering by being listed as one of AIChE’s 35 under 35. She is also an avid artist and creator of Color Me PhD, which is a coloring book series designed to introduce young children to scientific concepts of contemporary interest.

Electrocatalysis guru Prof. Ian McCrum did his undergraduate studies at Clarkson University, graduating in 2012. From there he went on to Penn State for his PhD, where he was advised by Prof. Mike Janik. In 2017 he moved to the Netherlands, studying at Leiden University as a postdoc under advisor Marc Koper. He returned to Clarkson in 2020 as an assistant professor. There he has won several awards, most notably the ACS PRF award and the NSF CAREER award. Tom had the pleasure of sitting next to Ian for three years while they were both in the Janik group, where Tom learned to live by one of his personal mantras: “when in doubt: ask Ian”. Ian we’re thrilled to have you on the show.