Associate Professor Judy Wornat

Judy Wornat comes to us directly from Princeton University, where she served for the past eight years as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. She is a native of southeast Louisiana, having grown up in Plaquemine and Orleans Parishes. In 1981, she graduated summa cum laude from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering. She went on to earn both her S.M. and Sc.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1983 and 1988, respectively. Upon graduating, she worked in Australia for a couple of years at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization as a research specialist performing experimental investigations of the effects of ion-exchanged metals on the pyrolysis products and reaction mechanisms of brown coal, among other things. Since returning to the states, she has worked on both coasts and has continued her research on the interactions between energy and the environment, and how environmental pollutants are formed from combustion fuels. She has given over 30 seminars at various universities and corporations; and, has co-authored over 40 publications. Currently, she is a member of seven professional societies, including The American Institute of Chemical Engineers and The International Society for Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds and serves on the editorial boards of Fuel and Energy & Fuels. While at Princeton, she supervised over 20 students and staff in research with three of those receiving departmental prizes for their research. She has herself received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. We are very excited to have her with us and know that she will be a valuable asset. She is pleased to have joined our staff and, thus far, has enjoyed her experiences with the department immensely. After teaching her first semester says she is deeply impressed with the caliber of graduate students we recruit, finding them very professional, diligent, and always well prepared for their studies. She looks forward to future semesters and future experiences with the department and the students.