Two Princeton CBE graduate students — Drew Carson and Rachel Yang — have won an Award for Excellence from the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
The award recognizes advanced graduate students who have performed at the highest levels as scholars, researchers and teachers. Students are nominated by departmental faculty. Winners receive a $2,000 supplement to their regular stipend.
Carson, a fourth-year Ph.D. student advised by A. James Link, researches a class of small biomolecules known as lasso peptides, which have broadly demonstrated biomedical uses including anticancer and antimicrobial properties. He is listed as a co-inventor on a recently filed provisional patent for his work on an antimicrobial lasso peptide, and he has two journal articles forthcoming. Carson helped teach CBE 441 “Chemical Reaction Engineering” in 2021 and 2022. In both years, he won a Jui Dasgupta Outstanding AI Award for his teaching efforts.
Yang, a fifth-year Ph.D. student advised by Michele Sarazen, works on problems in catalysis. Her research has focused on metal-organic frameworks that reduce the long-term environmental impact of certain catalytic processes. Combined, she and Sarazen have presented her work at more than a half-dozen invited talks and poster sessions this year alone. Last year, Yang won a Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Student Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and a Kokes Award from North American Catalysis Society. She helped teach CBE 346 “Chemical Engineering Laboratory,” also known as Core Lab, in 2020 and 2022.
