The Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Graduate Women’s Group (CBE Women) is a graduate student organization that advocates an inclusive and supportive community within the R.F. Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, with a focus on professional development, career advancement, and outreach to inspire the next generation of engineers.
Professional Development
We launched the CBE Women Leaders Day, which is dedicated to celebrating leadership and the inspiring journeys of women in chemical engineering and related fields. The day began with an intimate breakfast with keynote speaker Karen K. Gleason, professor at MIT, followed by her inspiring seminar and a panel featuring Gleason, Judith A. Rowe and Andrea Ippolito, who shared valuable insights on leadership, career progression and work-life balance in STEM.
This spring, the Lisa Walker Travel Award was granted to graduate students Andreia Fenley and Fiona Mukherjee, and to postdoctoral associate Wenjing Tang to support travel to conferences or workshops, fostering future career opportunities and motivating research directions. We sincerely thank Lisa Walker ’86 for her generous contribution, which supports female graduate students every year.
Career and Entrepreneurship
CBE Women hosted an entrepreneurship-focused event featuring Kamana Misra, formerly from Cornell’s Office of Innovation, alongside professor Brian Bauer and former professor Greeshma Gadikota. The event offered students valuable guidance on translating research into impact.
In November, we organized a CV Writing Workshop in collaboration with the Engineering Career Center. Graduate students gained valuable tips on crafting effective CVs for fellowships, postdoctoral positions and faculty applications along with a lunch while networking with peers.
In March, CBE Women partnered with professors Brian Bauer and Marsha Kowal to offer a workshop aimed at introducing students to the fundamentals of technology commercialization. Instead of requiring participants to bring their own research, the workshop focused on selected CBE-related technology cases, allowing students to gain hands-on experience in translating innovation into real-world applications.
Outreach
Every year, CBE Women organizes a one-day outreach program called the Women’s Outreach in Materials, Energy, and Nanobiotechnology (W.O.M.E.N.), an event for high school students and their parents to explore chemical engineering through lab demonstrations, informational talks and panels. Seventeen students and their parents participated in the 15th W.O.M.E.N. Event and completed four activities: DNA extraction of strawberries and yeast catalysis to make elephant toothpaste; polymer crosslinking for making slime and bath bombs; product manufacturing with ice cream as the output; and surface tension manipulation yielding milky fireworks out of soap, food dye and milk. CBE Women would like to thank our volunteers who made the event successful.