Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering 2018 Alumni Awards Dinner

Scott Zhang, Ph.D.
President, Honeywell Technology Solutions
Grooming the New Generation of Engineers

Abstract:

Dr. Scott Zhang, an alumnus from the Chemical Engineering Departure of Illinois Institute of Technology, will share his memories and moments at IIT, which shaped his career as a global president of a world-renowned enterprise's technology research and development organization. He will also share his thoughts on grooming the new generation of engineers to lead technology innovations in the new digital era, and the role engineering schools, corporations, and alumni play.

Short Biography:

Scott Zhang was appointed Honeywell Technology Solutions (HTS) president in August 2015. Honeywell Technology Solutions (HTS) is the engineering, technology research, and development arm of Honeywell, a Fortune 100 diversified technology and manufacturing leader that serves customers worldwide with aerospace products and services; control technologies for buildings, homes, and industry; turbochargers; and process technologies, process controls, and performance materials. HTS has over 10,000 employees across India, China, the Czech Republic, and Mexico centers.

Scott is responsible for building the structure and strategy to grow Honeywell’s engineering and technology group, leveraging the organization’s scale, footprint, and software depth to create a unique and innovative portfolio that includes new product development, software as a service, and engineering solutions to enable Honeywell’s breakthrough growth and meet the needs of its global base. Before his current role, Scott served as Vice President and General Manager of Asia for Honeywell’s Performance Materials and Technologies (PMT) group, where he drove significant business growth along with the expansion of PMT’s manufacturing footprint in China. Before that, Scott worked for Honeywell UOP for 18 years, gaining extensive experience in research, technology, and commercial and new business development. Scott graduated from Shanghai Jiaotong University with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. He earned a master’s in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Scott also earned an M.B.A. from the Kellogg - HKUST Executive MBA program.

Danielle Tullman-Ercek
Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University 
Women in Academia: The Importance of Mentors and Role Models

Abstract

Women with Ph.D.s leave academic career paths much more frequently than their male counterparts for a variety of reasons, from their desire to focus on family to outright discrimination. Fortunately, mentorship and role models help showcase the possibilities for women pursuing a scientific research career. Danielle Tullman-Ercek will describe the influence of these mentors and role models on her career path from her bachelor’s degree at IIT to her tenured professorship at Northwestern. She will also detail how she balances career and family and the challenges and opportunities associated with this balancing act.

Bio

Danielle Tullman-Ercek is an Associate Professor in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on building biomolecular devices for various applications, including bioenergy, living batteries, biomaterials, biosensors, biomanufacturing in resource-limited environments, and drug delivery. She is particularly interested in engineering multi-protein complexes, such as virus capsids and machines transporting proteins and small molecules across cellular membranes. Danielle received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California San Francisco and the Joint Bioenergy Institute while part of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2009, she joined the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering faculty at the University of California Berkeley, where she held the Charles Wilke Endowed Chair of Chemical Engineering and later the Merck Chair of Biochemical Engineering. In 2016, she moved her lab to Northwestern University, where she is also a Searle Scholar. She is a member of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, the recently launched NU Center for Synthetic Biology. She was awarded an NSF CAREER award for her work on constructing bacterial organelles using protein membranes.