Each year, a growing number of Northwestern students are setting their sights on careers that tackle today's most pressing environmental challenges. From safeguarding natural resources to pioneering solutions in the energy transition, the class of 2026 is prepared to make a difference. Read about students from this year's graduating class, including some alumni of programs at the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy.
Congratulations, graduates! We look forward to seeing what part you play in a more sustainable future.
Ben Mark graduated in June 2026 with an MS in energy and sustainability (MSES), administered by the Trienens Institute and conferred by the McCormick School of Engineering.
What are your plans after graduation? After graduation, I will join Calibrant Energy as a Solutions Engineer on their Commercial Team, where I will design distributed energy resources and evaluate project economics for commercial and industrial customers. Essentially, I will help bring clean, reliable power to some of the most energy-intensive facilities in the country, faster and more sustainably than the traditional grid allows.
How will you pursue energy and/or sustainability in your work, and why is this work meaningful for you? As a Solutions Engineer, I sit at the intersection of technical design, project finance, and environmental impact. On-site energy solutions that work on paper have to work in the ground, on the balance sheet, and against a decarbonization timeline. Getting all three right is where I will spend my time, and it is work I find genuinely compelling.
My connection to this space runs deeper than my career interests. During my previous consulting role, I helped lead a local environmental chapter in Chicago, organizing community sustainability events and knowledge-sharing programs. That experience reinforced something I already believed, that meaningful climate work happens at every scale, from neighborhood initiatives to industrial infrastructure. Moving into energy development feels like a natural extension of that commitment, applied to problems where the stakes are as high as they get.
What did you learn at Northwestern that you expect to carry with you into the future? Northwestern and the MSES program have equipped me with a cross-functional toolkit spanning engineering, economics, and market analysis within the sustainable energy landscape that will be vital in my career. The mentorship I received from faculty and the relationships I built with my cohort have been invaluable. And the perspective I have gained has fundamentally shifted how I view the world around me. I will always carry this new frame of mind with me, understanding the direct link between our everyday actions, the energy we consume, and the resulting impact on our environment.
Stella Behforouz graduated in June 2026 with an MS in energy and sustainability (MSES) administered by the Trienens Institute and conferred by McCormick.
What are your plans after graduation? After graduation, I will be starting work at Librium Group in Washington, DC.
How will you pursue energy and/or sustainability in your work, and why is this work meaningful for you? At Librium Group, I’ll be supporting capital project advisory and public-private partnership strategies across the firm’s energy portfolio. The work sits at the intersection of policy, capital, and project execution, and it’s exactly the type of work I want to be doing as I build a career in energy and sustainability. I am especially interested in public-private partnerships because they are one of the most effective ways to mobilize private capital toward infrastructure projects that serve the public interest. Building a more resilient and sustainable energy future will require investment at a massive scale, and these partnerships help make that possible.
What excites me most is the opportunity to apply what I learn in the classroom to projects that have a tangible impact on communities. Whether that means strengthening energy resilience, supporting critical infrastructure, or advancing sustainability goals, I want my work to help turn long-term ambitions into real-world outcomes.
What did you learn at Northwestern that you expect to carry with you into the future? Two things stand out: First, the people. My classmates and professors brought perspectives and experiences I would not have encountered anywhere else. Working alongside them through coursework, group projects, and practicum challenged me in ways I did not expect. They pushed me to think differently, communicate more effectively, and approach problems from angles I might have otherwise missed. This experience also taught me a lot about myself: how I work, where I struggle, and what I am capable of when I’m surrounded by talented people who genuinely care about making an impact.
Second, the technical foundation I came here to build. I entered the program knowing I wanted to work in energy, but also knowing I had gaps in the financial and analytical skills that drive decision-making in the industry. Northwestern helped close those gaps. I am leaving with a much stronger understanding of things such as energy markets and project finance, and furthermore, a grasp on the complex systems that shape how energy projects move from idea to implementation. Those skills will stay with me throughout my career, and I am grateful for both the knowledge and the confidence the program gave me.
Brianna Edenburn graduated in June 2026 from McCormick with a BS in environmental engineering and an adjunct major in environmental policy and culture from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
What are your plans after graduation? After graduating, I will be working in Chicago as an associate engineer on energy efficiency and end-user electrification and decarbonization projects.
How will you pursue energy and/or sustainability in your work, and why is this work meaningful for you? As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, I desire to advance distributional equity in clean energy so that the same social and environmental harms are not reproduced. This is meaningful to me because environmental issues directly impact people and the places they live. Last summer, I provided energy assessments and decarbonization recommendations to public schools to improve building performance and support healthier learning environments. After graduation, I will continue working on this program and others that help people navigate the clean energy transition.
What did you learn at Northwestern that you expect to carry with you into the future? Because of the interdisciplinary nature of Northwestern, I am grateful for the ability to pursue an engineering degree alongside a program in the environmental humanities. While my engineering coursework gave me a strong understanding of how infrastructure and environmental systems are designed, classes in environmental history, anthropology, sociology, policy, and law challenged me to think more critically about how those systems are implemented and who they serve. Northwestern’s flexibility also allowed me to study sustainability abroad, where I learned from the approaches taken by Denmark and other European countries. I hope to carry these perspectives with me as I approach environmental challenges in my career and beyond.
Meg Ryan graduated in June 2026, earning an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management through the evening and weekend program. She earned a major in strategy and a specialization in sustainability: climate, environment, and energy.
What are your plans after graduation? I will continue my role at Ciena Corporation as their Director of Environmental Sustainability, where I will help advance our corporate decarbonization strategy and integrate carbon metrics across the business.
How will you pursue energy and sustainability in your work, and why is this meaningful for you? Against the backdrop of rapid growth in AI and digital infrastructure, the tech industry has an important opportunity and responsibility to build more sustainably. At Ciena, our hardware and software help power the networks behind this growth, and I'm fortunate to be part of the team working to reduce the environmental impact of that expansion. I'm particularly excited about the opportunities we see to design products with lower power profiles, reduce embodied carbon, and incorporate more circular practices throughout product lifecycle.
Looking ahead, I hope to continue scaling our sustainability programming across key areas like supply chain, R&D, site operations, procurement, and more. What makes this work meaningful to me is the opportunity to contribute to solutions that help address climate change at a critical inflection point. Since pursing an undergrad degree in geology, I've been passionate about find ways to adapt and become a part of the climate solution.
What did you learn at Northwestern that you expect to carry with you into the future? Northwestern helped me strengthen both my sustainability expertise and my understanding of how to create meaningful change within organizations and industries. Through courses at Kellogg and the MSES program, I gained deeper knowledge in specialized topics like circular economy, impact investing, energy markets, and climate strategy. Just as valuable was the broader MBA experience, which sharpened my understanding of business strategy, organizational leadership, and change management.
One of my biggest takeaways is that we have the chance to build more sustainable and resilient business models, and to implement them requires a clear understanding of the processes and challenges of each function of a company. Northwestern reinforced my belief that sustainable business is good business, and my time here gave me the tools to help make that case effectively.
Tim Li graduated in June 2026 with a combined BS and MS in chemistry from Weinberg.
What are your plans after graduation? I plan to pursue a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In the future, I hope to pursue my research career in academia as a professor.
How will you pursue energy and/or sustainability in your work, and why is this meaningful for you? I plan to work on conductive polymers and sustainable battery materials for energy storage applications. I am excited by the opportunity to contribute to research that addresses global energy challenges while advancing fundamental understanding of materials chemistry.
What did you learn at Northwestern that you expect to carry with you into the future? One of the most important lessons I learned at Northwestern is the value of collaboration and communication in a diverse research environment. I learned how to work effectively with people from different backgrounds and disciplines, and how to communicate complex scientific ideas to both specialists and general audiences. I also developed mentorship skills being a teaching assistant here that I hope to carry forward throughout my PhD and future academic career.
Kunjal Bastola graduated with a BS in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism and in political science and environmental policy and culture from Weinberg.
What are your plans after graduation? After graduation, I will be heading to Washington, D.C., to work with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Specifically, I will be the E2 Diversity in Clean Energy Communications intern. E2 is a national, nonpartisan group working to advance policies that are good for both the economy and the environment.
How will you pursue energy and/or sustainability in your work and why is this meaningful for you? I am very passionate about environmental justice, and I truly believe that one way to advance equity in the environmental sphere is to highlight diverse perspectives, which is what I hope to do during this internship. I also think that climate communications has the power to reach a broad array of people from diverse backgrounds, empowering them to deepen their understanding of climate change and how they can be part of the solution. I want to use my journalism and media skills not only to raise awareness of the issues but also to amplify the diverse voices at the center of the solutions. At the NRDC, I will be working on social media campaigns and conducting other forms of media outreach to bring awareness to the work E2 does around sustainable economies.
What did you learn at Northwestern that you expect to carry with you into the future? My time at Northwestern provided me with a range of opportunities that allowed me to connect with a diverse array of people, which shaped my understanding of how important it is to bring in and amplify diverse perspectives in climate solutions. I got to travel to COP30 as part of a political science course and conduct research on Indigenous representation at global climate solutions. I participated in the Alternative Spring Break program, where I got to volunteer at an urban garden in Chicago and realized the impact that local grassroots efforts can have in empowering a community. I took a course called Environmental Justice in South Asia, where I got to participate in discussions with classmates about the importance of equity in conversations around the protection of the natural environment. Through all of these, I connected with and met so many people who shared so many stories that gave me a more nuanced perspective about what it means to build a sustainable and equitable world.
Courtney Smoljan graduated in June 2026 with a PhD in chemical and biological engineering from McCormick.
What are your plans after graduation? Following graduation this June, I will be joining ExxonMobil in Houston, Texas, as a Process Development and Scale-Up Engineer on the Separations Fundamentals and Development team, where my work will bridge emerging technologies from R&D to manufacturing scale.
How will you pursue energy and/or sustainability in your work, and why is this work meaningful for you? Energy is central to our way of life, and making it cleaner and more efficient is one of the defining challenges of our time. Chemical separation processes alone account for roughly half of industrial energy consumption, making them a high-impact target for sustainability gains. My Ph.D. research on porous materials for adsorption-based separations gave me a deep appreciation for how materials-level design can translate into improved performance, but also taught me that real-world impact requires navigating additional process-level considerations. In my new role, I will work at exactly that interface, evaluating technologies ranging from optimizing existing energy processes to assessing the scale-up potential of emerging ones.
What did you learn at Northwestern that you expect to carry with you into the future? Northwestern shaped me as a scientist, an engineer, and a leader. Working across the research groups of Professors Omar Farha and Randy Snurr, I developed technical fluency to approach separation problems through three complementary lenses: material design, engineering consideration, and predictive modeling, as well as the communication skills to work across those boundaries. Building on this technical foundation, coursework at the Kellogg School of Management challenged me to consider technical decisions through a business lens and communicate complex scientific ideas to non-technical audiences. Finally, leading within the Graduate Society of Women Engineers, including serving as President, allowed me to develop leadership skills that extend beyond a technical environment, working with people across a wide range of engineering and adjacent programs.
Percy Edmonds graduated in June 2026 with a BS in mechanical engineering from McCormick.
What are your plans after graduation? I am currently applying to engineering jobs in the energy sector, with a particular focus on renewable energy technologies and grid resilience.
How will you pursue energy and/or sustainability in your work, and why is this meaningful to you? I am planning to pursue energy and sustainability in my work by doing design work for renewable energy technologies that improve the resiliency of the electric grid, particularly as it relates to natural disasters. I have admired renewable energy technologies for a while, but the topic became very personally meaningful to me when I experienced the 2020 Midwest Derecho in Iowa. I had researched how natural disasters caused energy insecurity in classes before then. However, experiencing an extreme weather event and an ensuing power outage first-hand gave me a newfound appreciation for the importance of addressing these challenges, and I have been taking sustainability-focused courses ever since.
What did you learn at Northwestern that you expect to carry with you in the future? One of the most significant things I learned at Northwestern, especially in the Trienens courses, is the importance of interdisciplinary thinking and learning for addressing energy and sustainability challenges. In addition to the engineering knowledge I've gained through my coursework, I've had the opportunity to learn from classes in sociology, history, philosophy, law, earth sciences, literature, economics, and anthropology to get a complete picture of how energy systems serve people beyond the pure mechanics. One of my favorite parts of this quarter is the connection I've been able to forge between final projects in two of my classes. I am taking an atmospheric science class, where I am researching the 2020 Midwest Derecho from the perspective of how it developed as a storm system and how future climate change may impact the development of derechos. Then, in my ISEN course, I'm researching how the 2020 Midwest Derecho caused energy insecurity and what might be done to improve grid resiliency for the future. I highly value the interdisciplinary nature of my Northwestern education, and I know that it will serve me well in the future.
Marisa Bisram graduated in June 2026 with a PhD in mechanical engineering from McCormick.
What are your plans after graduation? I received the NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), so I will be working with them on facilitating the reclamation and reuse of high-strength fibers. This will include looking at characterizations and standards for improving the circular economy of these materials!
How will you pursue energy and/or sustainability in your work, and why is this work meaningful for you? What I am passionate about is addressing concerns regarding resource scarcity, especially in regards to manufacturing supply chain disruptions. Fibers such as Aramid and Carbon are energy intensive when manufacturing them from scratch. Improving their circularity is intended to reduce the impact from raw manufacturing, as well as recapture valuable resources that can be repurposed into usable products.
What did you learn at Northwestern that you expect to carry with you into the future? Northwestern was where I gained exposure and interest in manufacturing, especially in regards to supply chain flexibility. In Professor Cao’s lab, we were always exposed to innovations and the state of the art for manufacturing, as well as next generation problems that needed to be addressed. The entire atmosphere at Northwestern emphasized whole brained continuous learning, critical thinking, and flexibility. I plan to carry that approach throughout all of my work in the future!