BIOE WELCOMES TWO NEW ASSISTANT PROFESSORS
Marley Dewey and Carolyn Mills joined the department during the 2023-’24 academic year
By Andrew Masuda
The opportunity to help establish a new department and join a university that embraces interdisciplinary and collaborative research were two of the main reasons why Marley Dewey and Carolyn Mills joined UC Santa Barbara’s Bioengineering Department during the 2023-’24 academic year. We caught up with the two new assistant professors to learn more about their areas of research and the excitement they feel about joining the UCSB College of Engineering.
MARLEY DEWEY
After completing her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh, Marley Dewey joined UCSB’s new Bioengineering Department as an assistant professor in July 2023. She earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Maine and completed her doctoral studies in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“I think it’s exciting to be a part of something that’s new, because you get to put in your own ideas and what you’re passionate about,” said Dewey, who is also eager to help build the department’s graduate curriculum and culture.
Dewey’s research spans the areas of human health and the environment, looking at how cellular signals may influence bone cancer and how to create biomaterials to improve and accelerate bone repair. The university’s strength in engineering, culture of collaboration, and shared-use facilities were among the biggest reasons why she was thrilled to join the UCSB faculty.
“My research involves tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, which is why I’m extremely excited to be part of a top-tier university that has leading-edge research in materials, microbiology, and marine biology,” said Dewey. “Interdisciplinary research helps professors like me because it offers other expertise. If there’s a project that I want to get involved with and my lab doesn’t have that particular expertise, another lab on campus does. And together, we can accomplish something that, apart, we would never be able to do.”
In one of Dewey’s interdisciplinary projects, based on the strong resemblance between bleached coral reefs and biomaterials she observed during her graduate-school research aimed at repairing bone, she is investigating whether “the principles we use to design materials for bone can be modeled to mimic the composition of coral,” making it possible to design biomaterials to repair dying coral reefs.
CAROLYN MILLS
Nearly ten years after completing a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from UCSB, Carolyn Mills returned to campus as an assistant professor in the Bioengineering Department in January 2024. With an eye to an array of applications, she is interested in re-engineering biological systems at the molecular level to enable a more sustainable circular economy. That may include molecules that are used in vaccines and others involved in chemical transformations.
“I am happy to be able to come back to the place where my interest in research got its start,” said Mills, who earned her PhD in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. “Research was never on my radar until I took a class as a sophomore with Professor Scott Shell, who encouraged us to spend the summer doing something to improve our resumes for our future career. He offered to write letters of recommendation, which eliminated big barriers for us to get involved. That was my first summer doing any research, and I haven’t stopped since.”
Mills completed her postdoctoral work at Northwestern University, where she became involved with a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee on campus, organizing an inaugural symposium to highlight the research accomplishments of those holding underrepresented identities in Northwestern’s chemical engineering, chemistry, and materials-science research communities. She received the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department’s Distinguished Postdoctoral Service Award for her efforts.
Mills looks forward to returning to UCSB’s interdisciplinary environment in the new Bioengineering Department.
“Coming back to UCSB is a wonderful opportunity to give back to the College of Engineering and a community that gave so much to me,” she said. “I am thrilled to be part of the world-class College of Engineering and a department that I’m sure is going to be one of the best in the country.”
