Author: Andie Veeder | Major: Chemical Engineering | Semester: Spring 2023

My name is Andie Veeder, and I am a senior chemical engineering student here at the University of Arkansas. I work under Dr. Jamie Hestekin in the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering. In Spring 2023, I worked on separating and concentrating lactobionic acid and summarizing my research in an Honors Thesis for graduation. I have accepted a job at L’Oréal in Little Rock, AR, as a engineer in training, and I am very excited to put my chemical engineering degree into practice and grow outside of school.

In my research, I use electrodeionization (EDI) to separate large, organic sugar acids for use in biofuel production. The production of bioethanol is very inefficient currently, and comes with a plethora of problems, including being land and water intensive, competing with food supplies, and requiring a lot of energy to make. These are all problems that need to be fixed before biofuels can ever be a permanent solution to fossil fuels. My research aims to concentrate important intermediate compounds required to make fossil fuels so less biomass is needed to convert to fuel, helping to alleviate some of the issues previously mentioned. This is why further research into the biofuel production process is imperative to the future of sustainable energy resources.

I faced lots of challenges while working on my research project. I had hours of work scrapped due to machine malfunctions, power outages, and contamination of my solutions. All of these problems resulted in having to throw away data and samples from trials over several days. While these shortcomings were disappointing, I learned a lot through experiencing them. I learned how to troubleshoot and fix a pump when it goes down, and also how to be more aware when mixing solutions. These are things that I wouldn’t have ever given a lot of thought before they happened to me, but they made me a better researcher.

My mentors were Dr. Jamie Hestekin and Ph.D. candidate Leticia Santos de Souza. They were both fundamental parts of my success in the lab and outside of the lab. Leticia taught me everything I know about electrodeionzation and membrane separation processes. She spent hours in the lab with me, showing me how to assemble and disassemble an EDI device, how to measure samples, where everything in the lab was, etc. Dr. Hestekin was very supportive, and always challenged me to do more. Even when I felt like I was failing and not accomplishing anything, he kept me on track and in a positive mindset. He even pushed me to present my research as a national conference, which was a life-changing experience for me. My confidence grew so much through that experience and through working in his lab, so I will be forever grateful to both of them for allowing me to work in their lab.

I recently graduated, and now I am moving to Little Rock, AR to work for L’Oréal as an engineer in training. I hope to work in the research and development side of the makeup industry, and work on making consumer products more sustainable. It is possible that I will return to school and pursue a Ph.D. in the future, but first I want to experience working in industry and see where that leads me.