Faculty Spotlight – September 2023
Dr Julie Champion
Julie Champion is the William R. McLain Endowed Term Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned her B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. She was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Champion is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and has received awards including American Chemical Society Women Chemists Committee Rising Star, NSF BRIGE Award, Georgia Tech Women in Engineering Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, Georgia Tech BioEngineering Program Outstanding Advisor Award.
Professor Champion’s current research focuses on design and self-assembly of functional nanomaterials made from engineered proteins for applications in immunology, cancer and biocatalysis.
Who is a woman-in-stem pioneer who is an inspiration to you?
Marie Curie – she overcame significant professional discrimination and personal challenges to become a Nobel Prize winning scientist (2x!), ultimately sacrificing her life for the knowledge she created and the benefit it had to patients.
Who was a woman in your life who mentored you, or provided support?
My undergraduate research advisor at the University of Michigan, Professor Jennifer Linderman. She not only provided me with two different research opportunities, but also helped me decide to go to graduate school and supported me in my NSF and grad school applications. As a successful professor with young children, she also showed me what could be possible.
What advice would you give to young women engineers?
Be open to opportunities – it was never my plan to get a PhD, and even in grad school it wasn’t my plan to become a professor; as I learned of new opportunities and learned more about myself and my abilities, I said yes and altered my course. Surround yourself with people who believe in you. I didn’t have the confidence to become a professor when I was a PhD student, but my advisor and my friends shared the confidence they had in me and I believed them!