Chemical Engineering Graduate Returns to UCLA in Pursuit of Her Doctorate Focusing on Renewable Energy
Growing up in a Ukrainian immigrant family, Alexandra “Sasha” Grishchenko ’23 was inspired by her parents’ determination to build a life as software engineers in the U.S. They instilled in her the importance of taking on big challenges and turning setbacks into opportunities. Her grandfather has a doctorate in physics and math, and is the head of the Department of Microwave Electronics at the Institute of Radio Astronomy in Kharkov, Ukraine.
Perhaps due to the influence of her family, Grishchenko has always enjoyed courses in science, technology, engineering and math for as long as she can remember. As a junior in high school, she was initially drawn to biomedical research until she discovered her interest in the intersection of chemistry and materials after spending the summer before her senior year in the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science program, or COSMOS, at UC Davis. This experience solidified her resolve to pursue a college career in chemical engineering.
First in her family to attend college in the United States, Grishchenko was admitted to the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. As an undergraduate student, she took advantage of the many academic and social opportunities offered across the campus — from planning school spirit events such as Spring Sing and the Beat ‘SC Rally as a part of the Student Alumni Association, to giving tours of the engineering school as a guide with Engineering Ambassadors, to being a part of Greek Life.
Beginning her sophomore year, she also joined the student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) where she is part of a UCLA team that built from scratch a chem E-car, a shoebox-sized car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. After placing first in AIChE’s Chem E-Car regional competition, the team advanced to the finals her senior year.
At the conference, though, Grishchenko had to improvise a solution last minute due to a missing part for the iodine clock stopping reaction designed to activate the braking system. Despite the setbacks, the team managed to place among the top half of teams from around the world.
“Joining the Chem-E-Car team helped me appreciate the two sides of an engineering endeavor: the countless hours of work necessary to bring a project to life, and the problem-solving skills every engineer must have when completely unexpected setbacks appear,” Grishchenko said.
Outside of the classroom, Grishchenko sought ways to help other first-generation students navigate the college system. She worked as a peer advisor at the UCLA Samueli Undergraduate Research and Internship Program, leveraging her own experiences applying and interviewing for internships to guide other students.
“Working to improve equitable access to education and resources like electricity has always been a source of inspiration for me to get an engineering degree, and recently one that has only become more meaningful to me with the war in Ukraine affecting the lives and access to utilities of thousands of civilians in my family’s homeland,” Alexandra Grishchenko said.
She had landed two undergraduate internships: one with Entegris in San Luis Obispo, California — a company that provides advanced semiconductor materials and process solutions — and the other, Samsung Austin Semiconductor in Austin, Texas.
She worked as a gas purification intern at Entegris, where she was part of a team that conducted testing and regeneration of absorbent materials used to remove contaminants in gas streams for semiconductor-manufacturing plants. In particular, she was involved in a research and development project aimed to develop a new type of absorbent that could remove moisture from corrosive gas streams and are safer, simpler and cheaper to manufacture than the company’s current line of absorbents. She managed to discover an error in a procedure that had previously caused a new absorbent to fail. For her effort, she was named an inventor on the application for a patent filed for the new absorbent.
It was through this internship that Grishchenko discovered her interest in doing research and she started to consider pursuing a Ph.D. instead of a career in industry after graduation. She credited Carissa Eisler, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCLA Samueli, whose advice led to Grishchenko’s ultimate decision to choose academia over industry.
“Professor Eisler was memorable as one of my favorite professors in undergrad, and her research interests and values on community outreach align with mine,” said Grishchenko, the now first-year doctoral student under the tutelage of Eisler. “I am incredibly grateful for her help throughout the application process and am so excited to join her group!”
For her doctoral research, Grishchenko is focusing on nanophotonics and optoelectronic devices, especially the absorption and emission of light in perovskite materials with potential applications in solar cells, quantum emitters and LEDs.
“Working to improve equitable access to education and resources like electricity has always been a source of inspiration for me to get an engineering degree, and recently one that has only become more meaningful to me with the war in Ukraine affecting the lives and access to utilities of thousands of civilians in my family’s homeland,” Grishchenko said.
Grishchenko said she is grateful for the many mentors who have been a source of support throughout her academic career — from her family members, to her high school chemistry and calculus teachers, to her doctoral advisor Eisler.
“As I dive deeper into academia and identify the more intimate reasons that drive me in my career, I find myself resonating with women in STEM who seek to give back to communities and focus on renewable energy,” she said.
For fellow Bruin engineers who have not quite figured out what to do with their careers, Grishchenko recommends that they keep an open mind.
“You never know when you’re going to find a new passion that makes you excited about engineering — the near infinite access to new opportunities is what makes UCLA Samueli so great, and the only thing that can limit you is yourself,” she said.
Brynn Beatty contributed to this story.