Rate My Professor Aurora Munguia-Lopez

Aurora del Carmen Munguía-López is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University at Buffalo, joining in September 2024 to lead the Sustainable Systems Engineering Laboratory. Her research group develops computational tools for designing sustainable products and technologies, emphasizing multi-scale process design, technology pathway analysis, sustainable supply chains, and environmental and social justice. Applications span plastics recycling, waste management, clean energy technologies, food, pharmaceuticals, and textiles manufacturing. Key research interests include mathematical modeling, optimization, process systems engineering, techno-economic analysis, life cycle assessment, and fairness in resource allocation. Prior to her faculty appointment, she was a Research Associate in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from January 2022 to August 2024, where she contributed to holistic computational frameworks evaluating economic and environmental impacts of plastics recycling within the Department of Energy-funded Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics Center under Prof. Victor M. Zavala. She also served as a Visiting Research Scholar at the same institution from August 2018 to July 2019 during her doctoral studies. Munguía-López earned her PhD in Chemical Engineering with a focus on Process Systems Engineering from the University of Michoacan, Mexico, in 2021; her MSc in Chemical Engineering from the Technological Institute of Celaya, Mexico, in 2017; and her BSc in Chemical Engineering from the same institute in 2014.

Her publication record features impactful works such as "Process Systems Engineering Approaches for Sustainable Plastics Management" (Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 2025; front cover), "A Fast Computational Framework for the Design of Solvent-Based Plastic Recycling Processes" (Computers & Chemical Engineering, 2025), "Quantifying the Environmental Benefits of a Solvent-Based Separation Process for Multilayer Plastic Films" (Green Chemistry, 2023), and contributions to a review in Nature Chemical Engineering (2025). Munguía-López has garnered recognition including the FOCAPD 2024 Best Paper Winner, AIChE 2023 Minority Affairs Community’s Janice Lumpkin Travel Award, Young Researcher Travel Grant Award from FOCAPO/CPC 2023, Best Poster Presentation at CUWP Annual Meeting (2022), and Medalla Dr. Ignacio Chavez Sanchez for outstanding doctoral thesis (2021). She engages in professional service as a member of AIChE Environmental Division committees, session co-chair at multiple AIChE Annual Meetings, and invited speaker at events like the 2026 REMADE Circular Economy Technology Summit.