Page 2 - CEMS Newsletter Fall 2023

MESSAGE FROM THE HEAD
C. Daniel Frisbie
Dear CEMS Alumni and Friends,
CEMS is lucky to have had some very long-serving
staff members over the years. This summer we lost
a giant: Julie Prince, who has been Assistant to the Directors of Graduate Studies for 39 years, decided to retire. Many of our PhD alumni heard this during the spring. We reached out to you to help us celebrate Julie’s retirement, and you responded. Thanks to your efforts we have established a new graduate fellowship in Julie’s name. What a fitting way to honor someone who has impacted so many graduate students over four decades, since 1984!! We will surely miss Julie as she was the central figure in our graduate program for so long, but we know we will stay in touch with her. And,
Julie was able to spend several months training Michelle May, our new Graduate Program Coordinator, who will fill her shoes and take us in new directions. We look forward to working with Michelle in the years ahead.
Also this summer, long time Chief Administrator Ted Butler decided to accept a position as the Chief Financial Officer of the College of Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS). This is a wonderful opportunity for Ted,
and we wish him well. Ted was a strong administrator whose rapport with our administrative staff was warmly regarded by all. I am especially grateful for his stewardship of the department over his 13-year tenure, in particular during the pandemic, when we had significant belt-tightening to manage in addition to entirely new daily operations. We will introduce you to the new Chief of Staff, Sara Atkins Howard, in the next newsletter. She just started in the role on October 2.
While we will miss Julie and Ted, change of course brings opportunities to bring
on board new talent. In that spirit, we are delighted to welcome two new faculty
to CEMS this Fall, Professors Kelsey Stoerzinger and Lynn Walker. Stoerzinger
is a materials scientist with extensive expertise in electrochemical materials and devices, focusing on energy and the environment. She comes to us from Oregon State University where she was on the faculty in chemical engineering for five years. Walker is a well-known rheologist and soft matter expert, who has had a 26- year career in chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University before joining us. Interestingly, Walker spent part of her sabbatical in CEMS in 2017; we have had our eye on recruiting her for some time. We are very glad that both Stoerzinger and Walker are joining us; they bring leadership and expertise in research and teaching that we need.
In addition to the personnel changes I have just described, I’m proud to point out that Fall Semester 2023 marks the official start of our new Masters degree program in Data Science for Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. This new degree, designed by my colleague Prodromos Daoutidis, has been inspired
FALL 2023
DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND MATERIALS SCIENCE HEAD
C. Daniel Frisbie
Courtney Billing Gayle Gabrielski Mary Kosowski
CEMS News is published semi- annually by the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science for alumni, faculty, staff, students, and friends of the department.
EDITORS
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Phone: 612-625-1313
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Email: cemsdept@umn.edu cemsalum@umn.edu
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