Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2023
  • M.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2021
  • B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Florida, 2018
Professional Honors
  • Materials Science & Engineering Teaching Award - April 2023
  • J&J GEM Fellowship August 2022-July 2023
  • SCS Teaching Award May 2022
  • llinois Sloan Scholarship July 2018 – July 2023
  • School of Chemical Sciences (SCS) Teaching Award - May 2020
  • Ronald E. McNair Scholar May 2017-May 2018
  • AIChE Minority Scholarship Recipient Fall 2017
Professional Affiliations
  • 2023-2025 Early Career Member – Executive Committee, American Physical Society – Division of Polymer Physics
  • American Physical Society – Division of Polymer Physics (2018-Present)
  • American institute of Chemical Engineers (2013-Present)
  • Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (2013-Present)
  • GEM Fellow (2018-Present)
  • Illinois Sloan Scholar (2018-2023)

Dr. Liliana Bello is a chemical engineer with a background in computational modeling. Dr. Bello leverages fundamental understanding of polymer physics and computational simulations to solve problems across industries including but not limited to energy storage, medical device manufacturing, and consumer products packaging. Her expertise includes building mesoscopic coarse-grained models using Brownian dynamics, Monte Carlo techniques and programming in C/Python. She also has experience using modeling software such as LAMMPS, COMSOL, Aspen, UniSim, and ChemCAD.

By using a coarse-grained approach and theoretical polymer physics, Dr. Bello's research at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign focused on elucidating the fundamental underpinnings of charge transport mechanisms and how those interplay with polymer conformational effects and diffusive translational motions. Her research provided molecular level detail information to design redox-active polymer solutions by exploring the dilute and semi-dilute regimes, and effects of valency (counterion condensation) and salt concentration.

Previously, Dr. Bello interned with Johnson & Johnson Ethicon Endo-Surgery as a Development Engineer where she used COMSOL and ChemCAD to model a chemical extraction process. She additionally developed more energy and material efficient method for a chemical extraction process in the medical device sector for which she used Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) imaging to show proof-of-concept.

Dr. Bello has also interned with Intel as a Process Engineer where she automated process interchangeability between types of process tools and two mechanical partitioning tests to improve quality, productivity, and accessibility of historical data for technicians and process engineers. Dr. Bello earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign in 2023, an M.S. in Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2021 and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Packaging Science, at the University of Florida in 2018. She is also fluent in Spanish.