Jewell Named AIChE 2018 NSEF Young Investigator, Owens Corning Recipient

Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BIOE) Associate Professor and Associate Chair Christopher Jewell was named the recipient of two national awards by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ (AIChE) in recognition of his work in engineering and immunology. The AIChE Nanoscale Science & Engineering Forum (NSEF) selected Jewell for the 2018 Young Investigator award, while the AIChE Materials Engineering and Sciences Division (MESD) awarded Jewell the Owens Corning Early Career Award.

The NSEF Young Investigator Award recognizes one individual each year for outstanding scholarship, commercialization, education, or service in nanoscience and nanotechnology by engineers or scientists in the early stages of their professional careers. The Owens Corning Early Career Award recognizes outstanding independent contributions to the scientific, technological, educational or service areas of materials science and engineering for a faculty member under the age of 40.

Prior to the most recent AIChE awards, Jewell, a Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices faculty member, was named a Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovator and a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award recipient. He has authored more than 75 manuscripts and patents, including papers in ACS Nano, Cell Reports, Nature Materials, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Nature.

Among his many recognitions for both research and education, Jewell served as Associate Scientific Advisor for Science Translational Medicine in 2017, and a Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Young Innovator in 2016. Earlier, he appeared in USA Today as a “New Face of Engineering,” and in 2014 he was selected as the state of Maryland’s Outstanding Young Engineer by the Maryland Academy of Science - the state’s highest honor awarded to an engineer under age 36.

Jewell and members of his Immune Engineering Lab are working in three primary research areas: investigating the impact of biomaterials on immune cells and tissues; designing new materials to better control the specific features of immune response; and harnessing biomaterial for more potent and selective therapeutic vaccines that target autoimmune diseases and cancer.

Jewell will give several division plenary talks honoring his selection for these awards during the 2018 AIChE annual meeting taking place this Oct. 28 - Nov. 2 in Pittsburgh.

Published August 21, 2018