Graduate student Renay Su won the 3rd place in the Poster competition at the 17th annual conference held by Chinese-American Chemical Society (CACS) - Great Lake Chapter. http://www.greatlakecacs.org/ with her poster titled "Characterization of recombinant resilin-based biomaterials for cartilage engineering." Renay Su joined the School of Chemical Engineering in Fall 2009 and is advised by Professor Julie Liu. Her research area is to manufacture recombinant protein-based biomaterials for cartilage engineering. Especially, she is focusing on the protein called resilin, which is highly resilient. She is particularly interested in investigating the effects of the mechanical properties of these resilin-based proteins on differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells to cartilage cells.

The Chinese American Chemical Society - Great Lakes Chapter conference was held on May 4 at Baxter Healthcare Corporation. Industrial representative from several companies (Baxter, UOP, Abbott, AbbVie, etc) around Chicago attended the conference. The theme was "Latest Breakthrough Technologies."

GLCACS is a local chapter of Chinese American Chemical Society (CACS) representing the Chinese American scientists and engineers in the fields such as chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering and other interdisciplinary fields in the Great Lakes region of the US, including Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, and Ohio. CACS is the only Chinese-American professional organization that is officially recognized by both the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).

Renay was recently honored with two more awards. She received a $1,000 Purdue Graduate Student Government Travel Grant for 2013 and received a Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship from the College of Engineering, also for 2013.