Research

Breaking New Ground

Nanette BoyleThe Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at Colorado School of Mines has a comprehensive research program and counts among its faculty eight NSF CAREER Award winners, one PECASE Award winner, and one DOE Early Investigator Award winner. CBE faculty conduct cutting-edge fundamental as well as applied research with the support of federal and state agencies, industry and private foundations. The Department’s research may be broadly divided into three thrusts:

  • Renewable & Unconventional Energy
  • Advanced Materials
  • Bioengineering and Biotechnology

Many CBE faculty working in Energy have strong ties with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Agarwal, Herring, Koh, Kwon, Samaniuk, Wolden), located just 10 minutes from Mines. Much of this collaboration is facilitated through Nexus, a strategic Mines-NREL partnership. The variety of research topics includes solar cells, fuel cells, batteries, electrons to molecules, circular economy for energy materials, and biomass conversion. The department houses the world’s foremost center dedicated to understanding the critical role of hydrates in energy production as well as their potential for energy storage and CO2 sequestration (Koh, Sum, D. Wu).

The second core strength focuses on the design and synthesis of Advanced Materials for a host of applications.  Examples include atomic layer processing and nanoscale thin films (Agarwal, Wolden), biomaterials (Barbari, Chauhan, Krebs, Farnsworth, Pak), catalysts (Gomez-Gualdron, Herring, Kwon), inorganic and polymeric membranes (Gomez-Gualdron, Herring, Way, Wolden), and nanostructures based on self- and directed assembly (Marr, Pak, Samaniuk, N. Wu, D. Wu).  CBE faculty participate and advise graduate students in the interdisciplinary Materials Science program.

The third thrust within the department is Biotechnology.  Strong research programs exists in the areas of biomedical devices (Cash, Krebs, Marr, N. Wu), drug delivery (Chauhan, Krebs), tissue engineering (Farnsworth, Krebs), and metabolic engineering (Boyle). Much of this research is done in collaboration with local medical institutions such as the Children’s Hospital of Colorado and the CU Anschutz Medical Campus in Denver. CBE faculty participate and advise graduate students in the interdisciplinary Quantitative Biosciences and Engineering program.

Much of the research is organized through internal centers that provide shared facilities and resources for their members. These include the Center for Hydrate Research (CHR), the Colorado Institute for Energy, Materials, and Computational Sciences (CIEMACS), the Colorado Fuel Cell Center (CFCC), and Microintegrated Optics for Advanced Bioimaging and Control (MOABC).

Faculty Research Laboratory Overview

Explore the variety of areas of research our faculty and students are involved in by clicking the images below

Dr. Sumit Agarwal

Solar Cells, Electronic Materials, Atomic Layer Processing

Dr. Nanette Boyle

Metabolic Engineering, Flux Analysis, Biofuels, Algae

Dr. Kevin Cash

Diagnostics, Sensing, Biomedical Engineering

Dr. Anuj Chauhan

Drug Delivery, Transport, Biomaterials

Dr. Matthew Crane

Nanomaterials, Plasmonics, Next-generation Energy and Computing

Dr. Nikki Farnsworth

Biomaterials, Type 1 Diabetes, Microscopy

Dr. Diego Gomez-Gualdron

Computational Design of Materials, Modeling in Energy Applications, Machine Learning

Dr. Andrew Herring

Polymer Electrolytes, Energy Conversion and Storage, Electrochemical Engineering

Dr. Carolyn Koh

Gas Hydrates in Flow Assurance, Energy Storage, CO2 Sequestration

Dr. Melissa Krebs

Biomaterials, Tissue Engineering, Drug Delivery

Dr. Ramya Kumar

Polymeric Biomaterials, Intracellular Nucleic Acid Delivery and Biointerfaces

Dr. Stephanie Kwon

Sustainable Energy, Heterogeneous Catalysis, Green Catalysis

Dr. David Marr

Biomedical Engineering, Microbots, Colloids

Dr. Alexander Pak

Molecular Dynamics, Self-Assembly, (Bioinspired) Molecular Engineering

Dr. Joseph Samaniuk

Fluid Dynamics, Fluid-Fluid Interfaces, 2D Particles

Dr. Amadeu Sum

Gas Hydrates, Flow Assurance, Molecular Simulation

Dr. Colin Wolden

Solar Cells, Next Generation Batteries, Catalytic Membrane Reactors

Dr. Ning Wu

Self- and Directed Assembly, Nanotechnology, Microrobot

NEXUS

Learn more about the collaboration between Mines and NREL

NEXUS - Mines, NREL