Greetings from the East Village and welcome to the latest Shoop’s Stoop!

Our students and faculty continue to do amazing things! I encourage you to take the time to read all the articles in this newsletter. They include student activities and successes, faculty contributions and accomplishments, curricular initiatives, and alumni activities.

At the beginning of this academic year, we advertised for a tenure-track faculty position in the Department of Chemical Engineering. I am pleased to announce that we have successfully hired Abhishek Sharma to fill this position. Abhishek received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2021, and since that time, has been a postdoctoral scholar at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. His areas of academic interest include thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, molecular simulations, chemical kinetics, and statistical mechanics-derived molecular simulation of phase transitions. We very much look forward to having Abhishek join us in August!

Earlier this year, Nori Perez, the Dean’s Office Manager, and Elizabeth Waters, our Director of STEM Outreach, were both offered amazing opportunities elsewhere that allowed them to further their professional careers. So, in a relatively short time we were able to hire replacements that allowed continuity of operations. On April 1, Lizbeth (Liz) Soto joined our team as the new Dean’s Office Manager. Liz was previously the Administrative Coordinator at Columbia University Medical Center and most recently the Senior Administrative Manager at Weill Cornell Medicine. On March 18, Yvonne Thevenot joined our team as the new Director of STEM Outreach. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Mathematics, Science, & Technology, at the Teachers College at Columbia University and is the Founder of STEM Kids NYC. She focuses on curriculum and instruction design with culturally responsive pedagogy and approaches. We welcome these two amazing individuals and look forward in anticipation to the great things they will do for Cooper!

Our faculty continue to do amazing things. Professor Jennifer Weiser, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in biomedical sciences from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. She will join the faculty of Graz Technical University (TU Graz) in Austria. She will be a Visiting Professor in the Institute of Chemistry and Technology of Biobased Systems (IBioSys) during the spring semester of Academic Year 2025.

Our students also continue to do amazing things. Ubaidullah Hassan ChE'25 was named a Goldwater Scholar. Hassan is working with Professor Robert Topper in the Department of Chemistry on research that applies computational chemistry methods to the area of atmospheric chemistry. Our Solar Decathlon Team secured a place as a finalist under the Multifamily Building Division. Among twenty teams competing in the multifamily division, only ten advanced to compete in the finals that will be held at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, CO. We also had seven other students receive scholarships from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), the American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE), and the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) Metropolitan Section. I encourage you to read about these amazing student achievements in this newsletter.

Our Summer Study Abroad Program continues to thrive. This summer we will send 11 engineering students abroad. This includes Technische Universitat Dresden and Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, both in Germany, Reykjavik University in Iceland, the National University of Singapore, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid in Spain, the Barbara Ford Peace Building Center in Guatemala, Universidad de Burgos in Spain, and Bar-Ilan University in Israel.  

Finally, on March 29, we notified next year’s first-year applicants of our admissions decisions. This year’s applications were very strong. Including early decision, regular decision, and deferrals, we have admitted a total of 254 students to the School of Engineering. Even though we continue to be test optional, 84% of the admitted class submitted standardized test scores, and the average SAT score for Math is 770 and 730 Verbal. 76% of this admitted class will graduate with Calculus B/C, multivariate calculus, or linear algebra and 74% will graduate with AP Physics. Of this year’s admitted students, the total number of women was 40% and the percentage of first-generation is 15%. By all accounts, this admitted student class is very strong!

Thank you again for sharing your valuable time with me on Shoop’s Stoop! It continues to be an exciting time to be part of the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. I look forward to sharing additional updates in future editions.

Barry L. Shoop, Ph.D., P.E.  |  Dean of Engineering  |  Albert Nerken School of Engineering