The CBE Department is excited to welcome our two new Assistant Professors, Nikki Farnsworth and Stephanie Kwon!

Dr. Nikki Farnsworth joined the department in Fall 2019. She previously held a position as a Research Instructor at the University of Colorado Denver Anschutz Medical Campus in the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2007. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder in Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2009 and 2012 respectively. Her thesis work focused on the development of biomaterials for cartilage tissue engineering, under the direction of Dr. Stephanie Bryant. In 2012, Dr. Farnsworth began her postdoctoral work focusing on pancreatic islet biology and quantitative microscopy techniques to study islet function in health and disease, directed by Dr. Richard Benninger. Her current research focuses on understanding mechanisms of pancreatic islet death and dysfunction during the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes using biomaterials as a tool to facilitate this research.

Dr. Stephanie Kwon joined the department in Spring 2020.  She is worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Enrique Iglesia at the University of California, Berkeley. One of her recent projects involved mechanistic assessments of HCOOH decomposition routes on metals and oxides by combining kinetic, isotopic, spectroscopic studies with density-functional theory calculations. She also worked on understanding O2 activation pathways on metal oxides and the specific properties of oxides that determine the rates and selectivities of such routes. She obtained a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Seoul National University in South Korea and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University. Her Ph.D. work with Professor Randall Q. Snurr and Peter C. Stair focused on the nature of active oxygen species during selective oxidation catalysis.