News Article
ChE graduate awarded NSF Research Fellowship
After graduating from Iowa State University in 2005 and spending a few years in industry, Katie Pfeiffer, from Seward, Nebraska, decided to return to academia to pursue her doctorate at the University of California–Berkeley.
That choice has come with at least one reward.
Pfeiffer recently received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, which will fund up to $121,500 for three years of graduate research in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.
As an undergraduate in chemistry at Iowa State, Pfeiffer worked for Balaji Narasimhan, associate dean for research and economic development and professor of chemical and biological engineering, and Amy Determan, former graduate student, on biodegradable polymers as drug delivery systems.
“Katie Pfeiffer worked with us on a research project dealing with protein stabilization and delivery using biodegradable polymer microspheres and made important contributions to our understanding of loading and releasing proteins from degrading particles,” Narasimhan says. “She is an outstanding researcher with superb potential for success in doctoral research.”
After leaving Iowa State, Pfeiffer spent a year working for Pfizer in Sandwich, UK, doing small-scale development of antibody purification processes.
“It was my job to develop a series of operations to separate the target protein (drug) from the cell culture media, cell fragments, host cell proteins, DNA, and any other process impurities that may be present,” Pfeiffer explains.
Pfeiffer has been working as a process support engineer for Genentech, Inc., in Vacaville, California. She supports large-scale protein purification processes similar to those she was developing at Pfizer.
“My real interest is science,” Pfeiffer says. “Each year in the industry I have shifted further from the science side and more toward the business side.”
Her decision to return to academia in the fall will support her passion in science.
Whether she ends up in a private industry or academia, Pfeiffer hopes to have the opportunity to help develop the technology that will allow society to function after the fossil fuel era is over. She feels that the ability to produce liquid fuels efficiently and sustainably is going to become more important to our society, as fossil fuel supplies are limited.
