Rate My Professor Betul Bilgin

Betul Bilgin serves as Clinical Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago. She holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University, obtained in 2014, and a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Bilgin began her faculty career at UIC in 2014, progressing through the clinical ranks to her current position. She teaches core undergraduate courses including CHE 201: Introduction to Thermodynamics and CHE 396: Senior Design I, and leads the department's senior design course. In her early teaching days at UIC, she successfully managed a senior design course with no prior materials during an ABET accreditation review, earning praise for her dedication, effectiveness, and enthusiasm from the evaluator.

Bilgin's research interests encompass engineering education, team-based learning, and biotechnology. Her scholarly contributions include early work on proton conduction in hybrid electrolytes and protein-lipid interactions, with notable publications such as "Proton conduction in adipic acid/benzimidazole hybrid electrolytes" (2005, Physica B: Condensed Matter), "Copolymers of 4(5)-vinylimidazole and ethyleneglycol methacrylate phosphate: synthesis and proton conductivity properties" (2007, Reactive and Functional Polymers), "Emerging affinity-based techniques in proteomics" (2009, Expert Review of Proteomics), "Molecular mechanism by which palmitate inhibits PKR autophosphorylation" (2011, Biochemistry), and "Latest developments in experimental and computational approaches to characterize protein–lipid interactions" (2012, Proteomics). More recently, she has focused on engineering identity development and student success, co-authoring papers like "Work in Progress: Engineering Identity Development after Two Years of Undergraduate Education" (2023). Bilgin has secured an NSF research initiation grant to integrate academic and workplace competencies in engineering curricula and serves as a Core Investigator in UIC's S-STEM program aimed at supporting low-income engineering students. Her teaching excellence has been honored with the UIC Teaching Recognition Award (2021), UIC College of Engineering Teaching Award, UIC Teaching Scholar (2017), and the AIChE 35 Under 35 Award in the Education category (2017). Additionally, she promotes chemical engineering to K-12 students through innovative art-and-science demonstrations at over twenty events and actively mentors students via AIChE chapters, organizing professional development activities.