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Meet the Team

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Team Members

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Brian Love

Professor and PI

Brian joined Michigan in 2008 as a Professor in Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. Previously he had taught t Virginia Tech rising through the ranks from 1993-2007. He has his Ph.D. in Applied Science from Southern Methodist University in 1990 and was awarded a NIH Training Post-doctoral fellowship at Georgia Tech in Atlanta following that.  He has published 85+ journal articles and 2 books curing his career including a Biomaterials textbook.  He has commonly taught our polymers and biomaterials courses, and has been part of a team involved in biomedical design.  He was a Golden Apple award nominee for inspired teaching at Michigan in 2019.

Julie Rieland (2019-present)

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Ph.D. Candidate

Julie is a 2019 graduate of Michigan's MSE Department and is now a Ph.D. candidate in the Macromolecular Science and Engineering Program also at Michigan.  Julie is working on two projects, one linked with microplastics capture and the other on the use of ionic liquids to extract and reprocess cellulose for reuse.

Tololupe Lawal (2021-present)

Gradaute Ph.D. Pre-candidate

Tololupe (Tolu) graduated with her BS in Materials Science and Engineering at THE Ohio State University in 2021.  She is working on fiber extractions from Corn stover as part of a larger HARvEST Center proposal.

Attri Bezbaruah

MS Graduate Student (2021-present)

Atrri graduated with her BS degree (ChE) from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (2021). She's on a coop assignment at Halliburton but she will work on schemes to extract fibers from pineapple  when she returns.

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Malavika Ramkumar Ph.D. student

Rotation student 2023-present

Malavika is working on the notion of adhesive robustness linked to adhesive binding of microplastics.  She is trying to consider how many cycles that are possible with used adhesives and whether they lose their capacity over time and what are the origins of that degradation.  

Undergrduate researcher

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Amanda Diddams 2022-present

Amanda is working on oil water separation as a means for collecting microplastic particles.  The hope is to gauge whether this is a scheme that could be leveraged for polyolefins of relatively low density.  

Zoe Hu (2021-present)

Undergraduate Researcher

Zoe is an undergraduate (MSE) researcher who is working to support our NSF grant on microplastics capture.  Her contribution is focused on developing tools and standards to objectively evaluate capture effectiveness.  She has already published one article and is working on another 

Keon's focus is on identifying micro plastics that have been retrieved from necropsies and other live extractions from aquatic mammals.  we are developing a database of commonly observed microplastic particles

Undergraduate researcher 2020-2021

Alum:  Keon Beigzadeh

Undergraduate researcher

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Jacob has been miniaturizing process tools using ardunio based programmable controllers.  He won a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship to develop a miniaturized spinning take up wheel and is working on miniaturized extrusion.  He published an article on this in the J Chem Ed. He's now working at LeMond Bicycles

Undergraduate Researcher

Alum:  Jacob Dean

Robert (Bobby) is a 4th year undergraduate (ChE) working on breakdown of elastomers through high concentration exposures of chloramines  at elevated temperature.  The hope is to produce resins with enough unsaturation to be able to be reused. He'll be with us next year as a MS student

Undergraduate Researcher

Alum:  Robert Stewart

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Lydia is a Chemistry graduate from Xasvier University of Louisiana in New Orleans graduated with her Ph.D. in 2021  She worked on controlled release systems for localized antibiotic delivery using amphiphilic copolymers.  We have been probing the ability of gentamicin and vancomycin to release from colloidal crystals that self assemble above body temperature following liquid dispersion injection. She is now working at McKinsey in Chicago

Ph.D. Graduate, 2016-2021

Alum: Lydia Mensah

Alum- Srivatsan Raghavan 2018-2020

MS Graduate researcher

Sriva was a part of our diaper dehydration team, working on liquid phase extraction of the liquid found in saturated superabsorbant polymers. Since graduating with his MS Degree, Sriva has been working at Bean Therapeutics in Boston

Alum- Alexandra Pine 2018-2020

Undergraduate Researcher

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Cheng Chi worked on our diaper dehydration effort which included building and adapting the liquid phase dimethyl liquid phase extraction system.  Cheng Chi graduated in 2019 and is working at Intel

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Rishabh worked with our group following the completion of his MS Degree at Michigan on an IPT assignment.  He was working to develop swelling expandable tube structures based on acrylamide chemistry.

Post MS researcher

 Alum:RIshabh Tennakore-2019-2020

Alum- Andre Thompson 2013-2018

Ph.D. graduate

Andre worked on drug infused amphiphilic copolymers with the notion of controlled release of chemotherapeutics.  He was sponsored by both the National physical Sciences Consortium and GEM fellowships. Since graduating, he has been on the research staff at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD.

Alexa worked on our diaper dehydration project and developed experiments to gauge drying efficiency in superabsorbant polymers by centrifugation.  Since graduating, Alexndra has been working at the Plug and Pack Tech Center, a venture capital firm based on the west coast but she is working locally.

Alum: Anne Juggernauth, Ph.D. 2008-2012

Ph.D. graduate

Anne graduated in 2012 following a number of years in Macromolecular Science and Engineering focused on structure/property links in materials. Anne was a phenomenal microscopist and is now involved in technology assessment at the Univ of Chicago

Alum:   Kiersten Batzli, Ph.D. 2010-2015

Ph.D Gradaute

Kiersten completed her Ph.D. following her BS program in biophysics at American University in Washington DC. She focused on amyloid gel formation and now is a certified patent lawyer following Law school;.   Love the B/W photo..., vintage!

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