Group Members

Dr. Engelberth earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from Iowa State University Department of Chemical Engineering. She then attended the University of Arkansas and earned her PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2009. She completed a postdoctoral research assistantship at the University of Maine where she designed and modeled a process to convert hemicellulose to high-value fuels in a pulp mill. In the fall of 2011, she started as an Assistant Professor at Purdue University with a joint appointment in Agricultural & Biological Engineering and Environmental & Ecological Engineering. She was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in 2019.


Since joining Purdue, she has assembled a cohesive research team working to recover biomolecules from various renewable resources. Dr. Engelberth's research is focused on the recovery of valuable co-products from underutilized resource streams. Along with product recovery, Dr. Engelberth explores the design of the recovery process in order to obtain an economic analysis of the process to determine the value of the co-product.


Her commitment to graduate student success was recognized in 2016 when she was awarded the inaugural Outstanding Engineering Graduate Student Mentor from the ABE Graduate Student Association. She has successfully obtained funding from the Indiana Corn Marketing Council, the Indiana Soybean Alliance, the Purdue Research Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Showalter Trust.

Mahdieh graduated in 2016 with her PhD in Biological Engineering. She currently works for DePuy Synthes in Warsaw, Indiana.

Thesis Title: Investigation of High-Oleic Soybean Oil as an Extraction Solvent to Remove Hydrogen Sulfide from Natural Gas
Graduation Date: August 2020
Current Status: Postdoc at UIUC

Thesis title: Conversion of Mixed Organic Waste Into Higher Value Acids And Sugars
Graduation Date: August 2018
Current Status: Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Washington working with Dr. Mari Winkler