Mary Kate Mitchell Lane

Mary Kate Mitchell Lane graduated from Michigan Tech in 2017 with her BS in Chemical Engineering.

Her choice to attend Michigan Tech was an easy one after visiting during National Engineers Week, which directly followed Winter Carnival. 
“I joke that Michigan Tech was the farthest I could get away from my hometown but still get in-state tuition,” she said. “In reality, it was the promise of a Yooper adventure and the sense that Michigan Tech was the best place to become an engineer that solidified my decision to attend.”

During her time as a student, Lane embraced the culture of co-ops that was established in the University. Her engineering co-ops and internships led her to scaling and inspecting 120-foot-tall distillation towers at a refinery off the Texas coast, testing the physical limits of novel energy storage devices at a startup in Boston, and traversing the state of Michigan from a pumped storage hydroelectricity facility in Ludington to a wind farm in Saginaw to the natural gas pipelines in Detroit.

“These formative experiences motivated me to pursue a career in chemical and environmental engineering and gave me perspective on the scale of energy systems that shaped how I view the industry that informs my research today,” Lane said.

Lane credits Michigan Tech professors Julia King, David Shonnard, Daisuke Minakata, and Michael Mullins, graduate student Ulises Gracida-Alvarez, and who all supported her during her undergraduate experience at Tech.

In her final year at Tech, Lane was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, which led her to earn a PhD from Yale University in Chemical and Environmental Engineering. She then went on to secure a postdoctoral position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she continues environmental research today and works towards her goal of becoming a professor.

“My foundational training in green chemistry, green engineering, and systems thinking informs all of my decisions as a researcher and a person,” she said.

Lane designed green solvent extractions of high-value nutraceuticals and biofuel compounds from renewable algae biomass in her PhD research. Her current research as a postdoc examines the bioeconomy more holistically, identifying ways to utilize and/or upgrade biomass and waste streams to meet the chemical, fuel, and carbon removal needs of society.

She has been recognized with numerous honors and awards, including the Green Chemistry Institute’s Joseph Breen Memorial Fellowship, the Beth Calabotta Sustainability Education Grant, and the Next Generation Scientists for Biodiesel Scholarship. She also cares about her community beyond research, publishing two papers looking at broader impacts of green chemistry for pregnant chemists and for environmental justice efforts respectively titled, What to Expect When Expecting in Lab: A Review of Unique Risks and Resources for Pregnant Researchers in the Chemical Laboratory and Green Chemistry as Just Chemistry. She was recognized for her service at Yale with her departmental Excellence in Service Award and the university-wide Dean’s Emerging Scholar Research Award for research related to enhancing diversity.

In recognition of her career achievements, Lane will be presented with the Outstanding Young Alumni Award in August 2026.

Updated June 2026