Department of Chemical Engineering

Andrew White will join faculty in January

Andrew White, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, will join the Department of Chemical Engineering as an Assistant Professor starting in January.

“He was our top choice out of 200 applicants,” said Matthew Yates, Department Chair. “We are very lucky to have him.”

White, whose research involves computer-aided design of materials, said “the outstanding research being done at the University of Rochester was one of my main motivations for joining.”

He specifically cited as enticements the department’s expertise in energy research, the “unique connection” between the department’s materials research and the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, the University’s Data Science Initiative, the computational resources available through the Center for Integrated Research Computing, the proximity to the UR Medical Center as a source of expertise and collaboration, and the University’s commitment to entrepreneurship.

    “The University of Rochester has everything I need to be a successful researcher and I’m greatly looking forward to contributing to the vibrant research community at UR,” White said.

    Yates said that White “will be helpful in revamping some of our computer tools in Chemical Engineering. He was the only candidate with the necessary skill set to do that.”

   White’s research involves several areas, including traditional thermodynamics and materials science, as well as newer research areas such as data science and molecular simulation.

    “I hope to make an impact on materials for energy and biomedical materials,” White said. “This interdisciplinary research means I’ll need to collaborate with other researchers on campus, especially through the Data Science Initiative and the Center for Integrated Research Computing. I’m excited to bring my expertise to both centers and the Chemical Engineering Department.”

White, who grew up in California and Washington state, graduated from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology with a BS in chemical engineering in 2008. He also spent a year studying at the Otto-von Guericke Universität in Magdeburg, Germany.

While living in Germany, he worked for six months in a microbiology lab at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems with Professor Hartmut Grammel.

White completed a PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Washington from 2008-13. He worked there with Prof. Shaoyi Jiang, applying computational modeling to the discovery of new biomaterials, as well as understanding how nature interacts with biomaterials.

He is currently working with Gregory Voth, the Haig P. Papazian Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. His work there is developing new methods for combining simulations and experiments for applications in biochemistry and materials science.