Chemistry Senior Alexis Hoane Receives Judith A. Resnik Award

Alexis Hoane received the 2020 Judith A. Resnik Award. Named after the Challenger astronaut and Carnegie Mellon alumna, the award recognizes an exceptional woman graduating with an undergraduate technical course of study who will be pursuing graduate or professional training in a technical field.

Hoane graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s in chemistry and a minor in statistics. She earned both degrees in four years as part of the department’s combined B.S.-M.S. program, an intensive, research-focused degree that requires students to take undergraduate- and graduate-level courses in chemistry and write and defend a master’s-level thesis.

“Alexis has an amazing work ethic and is probably more ambitious in her educational goals than any student I have worked with … in my 36 years on the faculty,” Karen Stump, director of undergraduate studies and laboratories for the Department of Chemistry, said.

Hoane is passionate about environmental chemistry. She conducted research in the lab of Terry Collins, the Teresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry, that focused on reducing micropollutants in water supplies.

In her junior year, she continued her work on micropollutants with Collins’ collaborator James Wright at the University of Auckland in New Zealand as part of CMU’s International Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program.

Her work resulted in co-authorship on two manuscripts and on a published paper in the Journal
of the American Chemical Society.

She also followed entrepreneurial pursuits as part of the Aquaponics Project, a group of students from CMU and the University of Pittsburgh who worked to refine a sustainable system that can grow fish and plants in one device. Hoane developed the anaerobic digester, which allows the system to convert waste to fertilizer for the plants and generates methane so the device can power itself. The project won $35,000 from Ford in a national competition and continues to make sustainable food and agriculture systems more accessible as the nonprofit Ecotone Renewables. 

Hoane credits her experience at CMU with giving her the skills to identify and address future challenges.

“CMU has given me a breadth of opportunities to gain experience around developing technologies that can contribute to global sustainability,” said Hoane, who is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Illinois. She’s studying next-generation batteries that are more efficient and made from less hazardous and more earth abundant materials.