Chemical engineering senior Rebecca Carlson and MSU alumna Ariel Rose will be taking home the William Cunningham Award as a team. 

"I think it really helped me to be working with Ariel, my partner, because we make a great team," Carlson said. "We often see things differently so together we were able to push each other to come up with a creative design and have fun doing it."

Every year, the American Institute for Chemical Engineers releases a national design problem. Students have 30 days to work on it for their senior capstone course. At the end of the semester, the best designs are chosen for submission to the national competition.

"The development of our solution was indeed an adventure of sorts," Rose said. "The 30-day turnaround time stretched our limits through the ups and downs of creativity and frustration."

Carlson and Rose said they had to design a facility to manufacture adult neural stem cells, rather than a traditional chemical engineering plant. 

"It taught us more than we expected about not only neural cell growth but surrender, interdependence and excellence as we developed and refined a knowledge base in a field outside of more stereotypical chemical engineering realms of chemical refinement and reaction," Rose said.

Carlson will be graduating from MSU next May and will be pursuing a doctorate degree in bioengineering with the goal of researching autoimmune diseases, she said. She hopes this experience and spotlight will help empower women engineers at MSU. 

"I hope that current women in engineering at MSU will be encouraged and motivated by seeing other women recognized," Carlson said.

MSU alumna Rebecca Jacobs will be receiving the Walter Howard Design Award in the SAChE Student Competition for Safety in Design.

"I was ecstatic when I found out I'd won," Jacobs said. "On a professional level, winning the Walter Howard Award allowed me to implement high-level safety principles into a growing industry. Personally, I love the analytical process of design and was thrilled that my project was selected from the brightest minds in the nation."

One challenge presented was the need to upscale safe methods of cell proliferation to a manufacturing level, Jacobs said. Currently stem cells are proliferated on a much smaller scale than required to address the United States' market. 

"My design focused on biologically engineered cell types that promoted reliable reprograming and proliferation of adult stem cells," Jacobs said. "Allowing a large manufacturing throughput while ensuring a safe product."