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The Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering welcomes five new faculty members to its ranks this year, with three professors beginning in the fall and two having started this past spring. The faculty joining the department in 2020 represent our commitment to top-tier engineering education and world-class research.

James and Catherine Patten Endowed Professor Ryan Hayward

James and Catherine Patten Endowed Professor Ryan Hayward comes to CU Boulder from the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, where he was a leading researcher of mechanical instabilities of soft materials, active polymer materials and interfaces and the self-assembly of polymer and particle-based nanostructures since 2006. His research group is primarily interested in designing responsive, active and autonomous materials and in customizing their structure and functionality through frustrated self-assembly. Hayward earned his PhD in chemical engineering from UC Santa Barbara.

“We are broadly interested in materials that autonomously change their behavior and properties based on the conditions under which they are being used, allowing them to improve their performance or avoid being damaged, which has potential relevance for almost everything we use on a daily basis,” Hayward said. “We are also interested specifically in designing new types of materials for soft robotics, biomedical devices and membranes for applications such as water purification and energy storage.”

Assistant Professor Laurel Hind

Assistant Professor Laurel Hind joined the department in the spring. Her previous appointment was in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow under Anna Huttenlocher. Her research focuses on the growing global health concern of antimicrobial-resistant infections. Her group works at the intersection of engineering and immunology to design models of the infectious microenvironment, which are then used to investigate how multicellular interactions, the physical environment and soluble signals drive immune cell recruitment to an infection. Their goal is to discover new targets to control immune cell recruitment, resolution and anti-microbial function. Hind earned her PhD in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

“I am very excited to be starting my lab here at CU; everyone, including the students, faculty and staff have been so wonderful and welcoming during my transition,” Hind said. “However, it has not been the first year I envisioned. It has been challenging to learn how to start a lab, mentor and teach during a global pandemic, but I am grateful for the amazing students I have working with me and the colleagues in the department who have supported me during this time. I am very excited to be back in the lab and training students virtually through video demonstrations and Zoom. This fall, we are looking forward to running our first experiments looking at neutrophil migration to infection and hopefully adding new researchers to our team."

Assistant Professor C. Wyatt Shields IV

Before coming to the department in the spring, Assistant Professor C. Wyatt Shields IV was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. Shields has distinguished himself as a researcher through contributions to microfluidics, self-assembly, active particles and immune engineering. He has published over 25 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, including Nature Communications, Science Advances and Advanced Materials. The guiding objectives of Shields' group are to make fundamental contributions to particle systems and assemblies and to apply those principles to tackle new challenges in human health and translational medicine. He earned his PhD in biomedical engineering from Duke University.

“This pandemic has created a new set of challenges, especially for incoming faculty, but at the same time it has created new opportunities for creativity and growth,” Shields said. “This has been evident in both teaching and research, especially as we look toward new ways to build a strong sense of community during socially distanced times. Reducing lab work has certainly been difficult, but it has forced my students and me to pause and really think critically about what is most important about what we do. It has given us a fresh perspective of the problems we're facing in our research and a newfound vigor to address those problems in a more deliberate way.”

Assistant Professor Kayla Sprenger

Assistant Professor Kayla Sprenger comes to CU Boulder from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked as a postdoctoral associate for the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and the Chakraborty Laboratory for Computational Immunology. Her research interests include molecular simulation, adaptive immune response and the in silico design of optimal immunization protocols. She earned her PhD from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington.

"I am very excited to be joining such an esteemed department and to have the opportunity to contribute to its future growth and further its goals,” Sprenger said. “I look forward to mentoring undergraduate and graduate students who are eager to learn new science and are enthusiastic about using computational approaches to solve challenging problems at the intersection of engineering, biology and medicine."

Professor Michael Toney

Professor Michael Toney comes to the department from Stanford University, where he held several key research positions within the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource facility since 2003. He has won numerous research awards and honors, including his appointment to the American Physical Society as a fellow in 2019. He brings extensive industry experience in addition to his academic expertise, having conducted research for IBM from 1984 to 2003. His research focuses on understanding and characterizing the underlying physics and chemistry of materials for sustainable energy and synthesis pathways for energy storage, solar materials, hydrogen storage, clean water applications and more. He earned his PhD from the University of Washington.

“My research is focused on understanding operational phenomena in sustainable energy materials to help accelerate their development,” Toney said.