Student and Faculty Spotlights

Undergraduate

Ahmed Al-Ali

Q: Where did you grow up? 

A: I grew up in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. 

Q: What was unique about where you grew up? 

A: I had never seen snow until I came to Penn State. 

Q: What was unique about how you grew up? 

A: Living in a small country, the longest road trip I’ve been on before coming to the U.S. was three hours long. 

Q: Why did you choose Penn State? 

A: Penn State offered a top-ranked chemical engineering program with a huge community of people from my country and culture, which made me never feel alone. 

Q: What inspired you to be a chemical engineer? 

A: Chemistry was my favorite subject in high school. 

Q: What is/was your favorite class at Penn State? 

A: Organic Chemistry (CHEM 210 & 212), excluding the lab. 

Q: What do you enjoy most about your education? 

A: A wide scope of subjects in many different fields and majors.  

Q: If you had the opportunity to go back and talk to yourself on your first day at Penn State, what information would you like to have known? 

A: To pursue my interests when taking electives instead of taking “easy” classes. 

Q: What are your plans for after graduation? 

I’m deciding between graduate school and working. I will likely work for a bit before going to graduate school. 

Q: Have your plans changed from when you started at Penn State? What led to this change? 

A: My plan was to work in the oil and gas industry, which is a popular destination for people from the UAE. The way chemical engineering at Penn State exposed me to different disciplines has opened me up to new interests and made me reconsider working in the oil and gas industry. 

Q: What inspires you? 

A: I would love to one day be an expert in my field or at what I do, whether that’s in my work or education. 

Q: Do you have any hobbies? 

A: I like travelling, photography and reading about or learning new things. 

---

Graduate

Adam Smerigan

Q: Where did you grow up?

A: Flat Rock, Michigan, in the suburbs about 25 minutes from Detroit

Q: What makes your hometown unique?

A: Being so close to Detroit means that the auto industry has a lot of influence over the culture of the area. Many people work for the American auto companies and most cars are American.

Q: What was unique about how you grew up? 

A:My mom works in math education and my dad works from home, so I had a lot of support from my parents in the places where I spent most of my time: home and school. I think this helped me excel in school and guide me towards where I am today. 

Q: What interests you about your research? 

A: I chose Penn state for a number of reasons: 

• Research that is focused on sustainability 
• The new CBEB building 
• Proximity to the East Coast compared to my other options 

Q: What do you enjoy most about your education? 

A: I enjoy learning more about how sustainability impacts different groups of people. Everyone and the work they do are intrinsically tied to sustainability and how we as a society are going to solve our problems, and I think it’s super interesting to be able to participate in finding these solutions. 

Q: What is your research about? 

A: My research has two main goals:  

• Develop a sustainable method for rare earth separations from unconventional feedstocks. 
• Remediate a problematic waste (phosphogypsum) that is continuously being stockpiled globally. 

• I do experimental synchrotron work (x-ray absorption spectroscopy) to identify how to stratify ligand binding affinity between rare earth ions to develop entropically driven separations. 
• I also develop process schemes for rare earth recovery from phosphogypsum and complete life cycle assessment and technoeconomic assessment to help identify promising directions for future development. 

Q: What are your plans for after graduation? 

A: After graduation, I hope to work in industry or at a national lab doing sustainability work using life cycle assessment and/or technoeconomic assessment. 

Q: Have your plans changed from when you started at Penn State? What led to this change? 

A: I considered academia briefly but decided against it after seeing what it takes to be successful. Academia requires a vast majority of your energy to be directed towards your work and towards improving your brand. I have other priorities that I value, which would make it difficult to be both happy and successful in this space. 

Q: What inspires you? 

A: Having a meaningful impact on the future. So many spaces felt like I wouldn’t be able to contribute something meaningful to the future of the world. Being able to work and learn here to solve challenging and important problems is very fulfilling.  

Q: Do you have any hobbies? 

A: Some of my favorite hobbies are listed below: 

• Sports (soccer, snowboarding, volleyball, etc.) 
• Games (board and video games) with friends 
• Reading (usually fantasy) 
• Food and drink (making and trying food/drinks) 

---

Faculty

Andrew Zydney, Bayard D. Kunkle Chair and professor of chemical engineering 

What inspired you to be a chemical engineer? 

I grew up on Long Island, about 30 miles outside of New York City. Both of my parents were born in New York but wanted to raise their kids outside of the city. I went to Yale University as an undergraduate, and I was one of only eight chemical engineering majors in my graduating class in 1980. I decided to become a chemical engineer largely because of the encouragement of my first chemical engineering professor, John Fenn, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002. I ended up doing undergraduate research with Professor Fenn, and before I knew it, I was “hooked” on both chemical engineering and research. I decided to go to graduate school and got my Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.   

Why did you choose Penn State? 

I started my career as a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware, where I worked from 1985 to 2001. I was then recruited to Penn State to become the first Endowed Biotechnology Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Leaving Delaware was a difficult decision — I had great colleagues in the department and friends in the area — but I fell in love with the Penn State campus and the surrounding area. The University of Delaware is a much smaller school than Penn State, and it also had (particularly then) a much smaller research footprint without a very strong research infrastructure. I was truly excited about all the opportunities that were available at Penn State, including the extraordinary array of core experimental facilities and outstanding collaborators. The move to Penn State ended up being one of the best decisions I ever made. 

What got you excited about your research? 

My research is focused in two major areas: membrane technology and bioprocessing.  Much of the work in my lab examines the application of membrane processes for the purification of high value biopharmaceutical products, like monoclonal antibodies, vaccines and gene therapy agents. Many of these biopharmaceuticals are incredibly expensive — most monoclonal antibodies run about $50,000 per patient per year while the recently approved gene therapy (Zynteglo) has a price tag of $2.8 million for a single dose! Our research is focused on the development of new and improved strategies for purifying these drugs that exploit the unique capabilities of highly selective membranes with controlled pore size, morphology and surface chemistry. The work often involves collaborations with leading biopharmaceutical companies. We have current projects that are supported by Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Merck, Moderna and Pfizer. We also work directly with membrane companies like MilliporeSigma and 3M. It is truly exciting to be able to see the research that we do have a direct impact on the development of new approaches for the purification of these life-saving therapeutics. 

What is your favorite class to teach? 

This is a difficult question. I enjoy all the courses that I teach but each in their own way.  Although it may be hard to believe, I particularly enjoy teaching the Introduction to Material and Energy Balances course. This is the first chemical engineering course in the major, which gives me an opportunity to introduce students to both the breadth of the field as well as the approach that chemical engineers take in solving problems. It is also exciting to watch students begin to appreciate what chemical engineering is all about as they begin to grasp the material. I also enjoy teaching the fourth-year-level elective course in drug delivery, pharmacokinetics, and artificial organs. I have always been fascinated by the engineering aspects of the life sciences, and this course gives students a chance to explore how to apply chemical engineering principles to the analysis and design of complex biomedical systems. There is so much exciting work being done in this area, and I truly enjoy sharing those discoveries with my students. 

What do you like to do outside the classroom? 

I’m a huge sports fan. I love watching football, but I also follow tennis, golf, basketball, baseball, etc. I grew up a New York sports fan (primarily the Mets, Giants, Knicks and Rangers) — some of my best memories are of going to watch the Rangers play hockey with my father. Now I tend to follow college sports as much if not more than the pros. This certainly includes Penn State football, but I also really enjoy watching our volleyball and wrestling teams. It’s a shame that their matches aren’t televised more frequently.  

 If you could have any superhero power, what power would you have and why? 

Probably Dr. Strange’s ability to control and manipulate time. There never seems to be enough time to do all the things that I would like to do. It would be extraordinary to have the power to slow down or speed up the passage of time.