2026 Johnson Internship Application
Application DUE no later than April 1, 2026 @ 11:59pm
Submit one PDF or Word Document with file name format: JohnsonInternship2026_LastFirst
Submit applications to: patrick.geoghegan@oregonstate.edu
Questions? patrick.geoghegan@oregonstate.edu
Johnson 2026 Information and Requirements
- Applicant MUST be a declared CBEE major entering 2nd year in Fall 2026
- Required 300 hrs research (Start June 15, 2026 (or after) and completed by September 15, 2026)
- Compensation: $5325 + additional $600 living allowance (subject to change)
- Reporting Requirements:
- Weekly Journal (including research hours)
- Poster Presentation at the Johnson Internship Symposium and one of the OSU Undergraduate Research Poster Fairs (Fall 2026 or Spring 2027), AIChE Annual Student Conference or a Conference suggested by your research mentor.
Application Information
- NAME and OSU Student ID
- MAJOR (ChE, BioE, or EnvE) (NOTE: Applicant MUST be a DECLARED CBEE major at the time of application)
- OSU GPA (OSU courses ONLY - minimum 3.0 GPA required)
- Faculty Mentor and Project Selection (attached list)
Review the list of Open Projects and rank your choices by Faculty Name and Project #.
You may rank one or all six (your choice). If you rank a project you MUST be willing to do it if you are assigned to the project. Final selections will be made by the Faculty Mentors. - Please attach an essay (1-page max) on what excites you about the field of chemical engineering, bioengineering, or environmental engineering and how do you see the Johnson Internship helping you to achieve your career goals?
- Please attach a detailed resume, including as much high school and OSU information and work experience as you think is important to give the committee a good picture of your strengths and experiences
- Please also attach a one slide Personal Powerpoint (converted to PDF) that is primarily pictures (with some annotation) that introduces you and contains information about your family, pets, hobbies, high school activities, etc. (see webpage for examples)
REMINDER: This application MUST be submitted as a single document (PDF or Word) with the file name format: JohnsonInternship2026_LastFirst
Submit applications to patrick.geoghegan@oregonstate.edu
Johnson Summer Intern Program - Summer 2026 Positions
Summer 2026 Johnson Project Listings
All positions in the School of CBEE at OSU unless otherwise noted.
Applicants must be CBEE students having completed their 1st Year at OSU or 1st Year at OSU as a Transfer Student.
Please do not contact faculty directly
Project: Sensors for health monitoring
We are developing electrochemical sensors to detect analytes in saliva, with the goal of enabling noninvasive home health monitoring by patients. Students on the project will learn to fabricate devices (using our laser cutter and stencil-printer), use the devices to measure analyte levels in samples, and then analyze the data and interpret the experimental results. A specific focus for the summer is to improve the sensitivity of our sensors. We are looking for enthusiastic students to join our team!
Mentors: Elain Fu (faculty) and Sumin Jeong (graduate student)
Number of positions: 2, BIOE preferred
Project #1: Wildfire Impact on Drinking Water Treatment
This project explores how wildfires can disrupt drinking water treatment systems and challenges us to design resilient solutions that ensure safe water after disasters. It combines literature review, field studies, laboratory experiments, and cutting-edge simulation techniques to understand the intricate interplay between wildfire byproducts and water treatment processes. By investigating this critical issue, you'll gain hands-on experience in environmental engineering and develop innovative strategies that could protect communities and ecosystems during extreme events.
Project #2: Harnessing Membrane Innovation for Waste-to-Fertilizer Transformation
This project challenges you to convert waste into a valuable resource by recovering liquid fertilizer through cutting-edge membrane technology. You'll get hands-on experience designing and optimizing membrane systems to filter and concentrate nutrients, transforming everyday waste into a sustainable fertilizer solution. Embrace this opportunity to explore innovative engineering practices that bridge environmental sustainability and agricultural advancement.
Number of positions: 2, ChE or EnvE preferred
Project: Designing Advanced Membranes to Separate Lithium for Future Batteries Lithium is a critical element used in rechargeable batteries that power electric vehicles, smartphones, and renewable energy systems. However, lithium is often found together with other ions such as magnesium in natural brines and seawater, making it difficult to extract efficiently. Developing technologies that can selectively separate lithium from these mixtures is an important challenge for sustainable energy.
In this project, students will explore the use of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs) as building blocks for next-generation separation membranes. Students will gain hands-on experience synthesizing MOF/COF materials, fabricating membranes, and conducting experiments to investigate how these materials selectively separate lithium from magnesium ions. The project will introduce students to nanoscale materials design for energy and environmental applications.
Number of positions: 1-2
Project: Organ Cryopreservation
Organ cryopreservation would revolutionize organ transplantation by overcoming the shelf life limitations of conventional storage methods. However, it is not currently possible to cryopreserve human organs without excessive cell damage. The goal of the project is to identify mixtures of chemicals that can prevent ice damage during cryopreservation without killing the cells due to toxicity.
Mentors: Cameron Sugden/Guillermo Vazquez Galindo
Number of positions: 2, BIOE preferred
skip.rochefort@oregonstate.edu
Project #1: Wastes Plastics (Ocean and Land) to Fuel
This project looks to recycle waste plastics to a diesel product using a pyrolysis reactor. The goal of the project is to develop a simple, low-cost reactor to deploy in underserved communities with plastic wastes issues. Testing of the product using a gas chromatograph and analysis of combustion products from a small-scale diesel engine are planned for 2024. A 25kg pyrolysis will be deployed at the OSU Ag Experiment Station in Malheur County in Summer 2026. The students will work as part of a TEAM of undergraduate researchers that have been involved in the project for over three years. We have collaborations with communities in Kodiak, AK and Santa Cruz, CA. There is the possibility of a trip to Alaska to collect ocean plastic waste from remote beaches. In addition, we are working with several industrial and community partners consulting on various aspects of pyrolysis technology.
Number of positions: 2
Project #2: A Wildfire Resistant Roof and Personal Shelter
This project uses a technology we have developed to implement it in a wildfire resistant roof on one part, and in another application, to modify the personal protection shelters used by wildland firefighters to improve their safety. We have worked several years on this project, and it has been dormant for about one year. We want to revitalize it because it is such an important project that could help save lives every wildfire season. There are more experiments required to prove concept and more design changes to be made before going to market.
Number of positions: 1
Note: All students working in the Rochefort Polymer Lab also become involved with the K-12 STEM Outreach activities throughout the academic year and summer during the Johnson Internship. There are currently >30 UG students working in our lab on various teams, so no one is ever alone. We all work in teams.
Project: Understanding How to Synthesize Catalyst Active Sites for Next-Generation Plastic Recycling & Upcycling
One exciting reaction chemistry that is gaining interest from catalyst researchers in the fields of waste plastic upcycling and renewable alkene production is olefin metathesis. The fundamental challenge with this reaction chemistry is a poor understanding of how to create these novel catalyst sites using traditional metal oxide catalysts. Join this project to learn how to synthesize these novel heterogeneous catalysts, test them with chemical reactors connected to an MS and GC, and study them using infrared spectroscopy.
Mentors: Elena Wynkoop and Lucas Ellis
Number of positions: 2, ChE preferred
lewis.semprini@oregonstate.edu
Project: Microbial Hydrogels for the Transformation of Organic Contaminants in Water
Number of positions: 1, EnvE preferred
chih-hung.chang@oregonstate.edu
Project: Self-Driving Lab for Copper Electrodeposition
This project introduces students to electrochemistry and automation. Students will work on improving an existing localized deposition nozzle, automating the deposition process, and studying how different process parameters influence local copper deposition and film growth. Students will gain experience in experimental setup, data collection, and data analysis.
Number of positions: 1-2
Project: A chemical forensics approach to assessing soil ecosystems health following biosolids soil amendments
This study aims to determine the fate and transport of chemical compounds from biosolids in land-applied soils. We will conduct batch reactor experiments to determine the fate of chemical compounds and test bioremediation approaches such as co-encapsulating hydrogel beads with pure bacterial cultures and slow-release growth substrates.
Collaborator: Lew Semprini, PhD
Mentor: Marie Oland (4th year PhD EnvE)
EnvE students preferred
Project: Battery Deactivation and Direct Cathode Recycling
OnTo Technology at Bend of ¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓ State develops advanced recycling for lithium batteries including elimination of hazards and efficient recovery of critical materials. These techniques are known as deactivation and cathode-healingâ„¢ respectively. Using these technologies, OnTo will field a pilot plant for recycling electric vehicle and energy storage end- of-life batteries. The student will work in Dr. Zhenxing Feng’s lab at Corvallis for the collaboration of OnTo Technology for the following work.
The student will evaluate methods for recovery and separation of battery materials. The experience will utilize analytical techniques to support the comparison, these techniques include methods available through OSU (e.g., TGA, DSC, Particle size analysis, IR/UV-vis)
Number of positions: 1-2, ChE preferred
Project #1: Campus Carbon Reduction
Work on your choice of three campus carbon reduction initiatives which include demand flexibility for laboratories to reduce carbon footprint of electricity; waste heat harvest and reuse opportunities on campus; or hydrothermal conversion of campus biomass into useful products.
Mentors: Nick AuYeung and Vy Pham
Number of positions: 1, ChE preferred
Project #2: Thermochemical Energy Storage for Controlled Environment Agriculture
Explore innovative chemical heat storage pathways for storing low grade heat to reduce the carbon footprint of growing plants year-round in greenhouses, indoor hydroponic farms, and or controlled agricultural environments.
Mentors: Nick AuYeung and Penda Faye
Number of positions: 1, ChE preferred
Project: Automated lab for surfactant characterization
Surfactants are ubiquitous—in soaps, medicines, pesticides, and industrial cleaners— acting as wetting agents, emulsifiers, foaming agents, and more. Yet, most are environmentally harmful, and greener alternatives are needed. Finding new surfactants with the right properties is slow, costly, and largely trial-and-error.
Our project tackles this by combining machine learning with hands-on lab experiments. We develop probabilistic machine learning models and decision-making algorithms that learn from each experiment and tell us which experiment to run next—dramatically accelerating the search for new surfactants with desirable surface tension or micellar properties. In the wet lab, we use a pendant drop instrument to precisely measure surface tension by analyzing the shape of a tiny suspended droplet.
Number of positions: 1. Anyone interested in both wet lab experiments/instrumentation development and math / machine learning/ computer programming.
¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓ Health & Science University Positions (Portland, OR)
Note: If interested in these positions send your application to skip.rochefort@oregonstate.edu
Do not contact OHSU Faculty directly.
If you do, your application will be removed from consideration.
The Aslan and McCarty labs study molecular mechanisms of platelet function in health and disease. We are seeking to host a 2023 Johnson Summer Intern at OHSU with interests in biochemistry, cell biology and systems biology for microscopy studies of platelet adhesion and effects of novel therapies on platelet activation. Previous Johnson Scholars from our OHSU groups have contributed to and led publications and have gone on to medical and graduate research programs.
Assessment of the effects of Syk and BTK inhibitors on GPVI-mediated platelet signaling and function (AJP Cell Phys, 2021)
Phosphoproteomic quantitation and causal analysis reveal pathways in GPVI/ITAM-mediated platelet activation programs (Blood, 2020)
The BCR-ABL inhibitor ponatinib inhibits platelet immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif (ITAM) signaling, platelet activation and aggregate formation under shear (Thromb Res, 2015)
The Rugonyi lab studies interactions between cardiac mechanics and function, especially in congenital heart disease. Our studies span embryonic cardiac development to adult heart disease. We are looking for interns with interests in embryology and/or heart disease, who would like to integrate experimental biology and engineering techniques, including computational modeling and programming.
Project: Musculoskeletal regenerative engineering
The Nakayama lab develops engineered therapies for treating musculoskeletal injuries and disease. We leverage regenerative and immunomodulatory biomaterials, 3D printing, and preclinical models to ask and answer questions about muscle and bone health and improve patient outcomes following orthopaedic injury. We are seeking interns with interests in biomaterial fabrication, cell culture, molecular biology, and regenerative medicine. Some example projects include:
- 3D printing and nanofibrillar patterning of decellularized extracellular matrix (dECM) proteins to guide immune, muscle, bone, and vascular cell behavior.
- Defining the role of aging in response to complex lower limb trauma using in vitro and preclinical models to evaluate age-related differences in immune response, tissue healing, and functional outcomes.
- Evaluating the role and treatment of iron deficiency and injury-associated anemia in orthopaedic trauma in both the preclinical and clinical settings.