Purdue University
rroncanc@purdue.edu
he / him / his
CV

Rathziel Roncancio Reyes received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and entered the Undergraduate Research Experience Purdue-Colombia (UREP-C) in 2016. He is now part of a Ph.D. program for Colombian students supported by the Ministry of Education in partnership with Purdue and is studying the fields of biofuels, biomass and coal gasification. He has been independently responsible for a project involving biomass conversion, including CO₂ recycling, with a focus on the types of biomass relevant to his home country. Working in the sugar cane industry in Colombia showed him the magnitude of biomass waste in the agricultural sector and prompted his research about how gasification can potentially solve the issues of agricultural waste disposal and producing energy for the development and security of difficult-to-reach cities. He has been a teaching assistant at Purdue since 2017, and in 2019, he received the Foundations in College Teaching certificate from the Center of Instructional Excellence. He is the website and social media coordinator for the Official Mechanical Engineering Graduate Students Association (OMEGA) and serves as secretary of the Colombian Student Association at Purdue (CSAP). As a future engineering faculty member, he hopes to recruit more underrepresented students into academia.

Research Interests

Combustion and energy utilization