Research Experience for Undergraduates provided opportunities for students to conduct research related to chemical engineering
Published: Jul 24, 2025 8:10 AM
By Joe McAdory
What’s it really like to conduct research as a graduate student in chemical engineering? Sixteen undergraduates — 15 from Auburn and one from Alabama State — spent two months this summer finding out.
The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program provided opportunities for students to conduct research related to chemical engineering via a structured summer experience that combined lab work with professional development and mentorship. Students participating represented the departments of aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, materials engineering, College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment and the College of Liberal Arts.
“Our program aims to help students develop important professional skills related to research such as giving an elevator pitch, writing an abstract and creating a scientific presentation,” said Michael Howard, an assistant professor in chemical engineering, who oversaw the program’s professional development component along with peer assistant professor Symone Alexander.
Bi-weekly sessions in Ross Hall provided instruction on those skills.
“This undergraduate program has been a big change for me from past work experiences,” said Kaeleb Barnett, a sophomore in chemical engineering who researched “Analyzing Diffusion of Rod-Sphere Nanoparticle Suspensions” under the mentorship of Howard and graduate student Levi Petix. “This program gave me the chance to apply what I’ve learned in class to real work. It’s encouraging to see the things I’ve studied show up in what I’m doing here.”
Alexander said the program fostered stronger connections between students and faculty.
“Many faculty members have undergraduate researchers working in their research groups, but they may not necessarily get a chance to interact with each other,” she said. “By running department-level programming, we can build a community of student researchers and create a better experience for them.”
Other faculty mentors included Chemical Engineering Professors Peter He, Virginia Davis and Jin Wang, Associate Professor Bryan Beckingham, Assistant Professor Jean Francois-Louf and Materials Engineering Associate Professor Edward Davis.
The program concluded on Friday, July 18, with students presenting individual research projects via poster presentations before faculty and peers.
Emily Self, a sophomore studying chemical engineering, said the experience gave her a unique opportunity to explore her own ideas, “Comparative Spectroscopic and Color Analysis of Extracted and Extruded Ethylene Vinyl Alcohol Used in Food Packaging,” under the mentorship of Virginia Davis.
“I really loved the opportunity to answer my own questions and had the freedom to conduct my own research,” she said. “Instead of being assigned something specific, I got to explore and did not know what the results would be.”
Barnett said the experience, “opened possibilities.”
“It helped me explore topics that are important to me and figure out what I want to do,” said Barnett, who is considering graduate school. “This program has me excited about the future.”
Media Contact: , jem0040@auburn.edu, 334.844.3447
Finley Gray, a junior in aerospace engineering, discusses her summer research, "Effects of Varying Barrier Layer Content on the Properties of Multilayer Food Packaging," with Allan David, the college's associate dean for research.
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