Katelyn Hamilton describes making coffee as a “really big science experiment.”
Hamilton, a junior chemical engineering major at the UTC, has transformed a high school coffee shop job into the cornerstone of her academic and career goals.
“It’s what I tell everyone when I have this conversation about making coffee: You have to weigh everything. You have to measure the temperature of everything. You have ratios. Everything has to be on point to make a good cup of coffee.”
A 2022 graduate of Tullahoma (Tennessee) High School, Hamilton began working at a coffee shop during her junior year of high school. What started as a part-time job quickly became a passion as she dove into the intricacies of coffee preparation—studying the history and technicalities of coffee-making as part of earning her barista certification.
After spending one semester at both Mississippi State University and Tennessee Tech, Hamilton arrived at UTC in August 2023 with a fascination with the science of coffee. Initially dreaming of working for NASA as a mission specialist, she experienced “an epiphany” during a conversation with her Tennessee Tech roommate.
“I was talking about space but I felt a little stressed; there are so many requirements that you need to even get to the point of working at NASA as an astronaut,” she recalled. “Then—right after that—we started talking about coffee and all the stresses just went away.
“We started talking about the science behind it and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, there is chemical engineering in coffee roasting.’ I decided to change my career path.”
Hamilton brought her enthusiasm for coffee and a growing curiosity about its environmental impacts to Chattanooga—pairing her UTC schooling with a barista position at nearby Goodman Coffee Roasters.
She had the opportunity to merge the two interests during the fall 2024 semester after noticing a bulletin board in the Engineering and Computer Science Building that featured Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering Venkateswara Rao Kode’s research on bio-nanocomposites for 3D printing.
Curiosity piqued, she contacted Kode and proposed using spent coffee grounds to create a 3D printing filament.
Kode, who had never participated in coffee research, was intrigued.
“She reached out to me and said, ‘Dr. Kode, I work in a coffee shop and we have a lot of spent coffee grounds that we don’t know what to do with. How can we effectively utilize this waste and help improve the ongoing research at UTC?’” he recalled.
“I said, ‘Bring it in. We can convert those spent coffee grounds into something useful.’”
Hamilton and Kode started working together in the lab researching the spent coffee grounds, as she learned how to conduct pyrolysis and use a scanning electron microscope.
Pyrolysis is a process where organic material—in this case, the spent coffee grounds—is heated in the absence of oxygen. This heating breaks down the material into smaller compounds, leaving behind a carbon-rich product known as biochar. Hamilton used the scanning electron microscope to analyze the biochar’s topography.
“It was mind-boggling … drying the coffee, baking it six hours total, and then we undergo pyrolysis using a tube furnace,” Hamilton explained. “You can see all the different coffee components—like the oils getting cooked away—but at the very end it’s just this black carbon. It’s like, ‘Wow, that’s literally carbon that we’re looking at.’ That was just really, really cool.”
Kode, who joined the UTC faculty at the start of the 2024-25 academic year, said Hamilton’s enthusiasm for the research project—which is funded by the Faculty Development Grant and the UTC Chemical Engineering Faculty Startup Grant—has been inspiring.
“It’s absolutely amazing to have undergraduate students like Katelyn working in the lab and learning state-of-the-art research, especially with the ongoing environmental concerns around the world to bring down the carbon emissions and help improve the overall circular economy and sustainability,” Kode said. “Her project aligns with our efforts to promote chemical engineering with an environmental science focus.”
“We have lots of exciting things coming up (during the spring) semester, so this is just a footstep to the door of possibilities.”
While Hamilton’s passion for coffee engineering is evident, she also shared challenges she has faced in her journey—as she was diagnosed with ADHD at an early age.
“With ADHD, the biggest downside is academics,” she explained. “I’ve struggled with academics because of my ADHD for as long as I can remember—and I know I’m not the only one who struggles with it.
“There are some things that you can’t do because it gets really hard sometimes. I didn’t think I was going to work in STEM because of how difficult it was.”
Hamilton talked about her days as an elementary school math student “when everyone was doing multiplication and division” while she was “still stuck adding and subtracting. It really feels like you’re a step behind everybody.”
“I want to really shine a light on it because if you have ADHD or something else, it shouldn’t limit what you can do,” she said. “But I’ve had to work harder and stay determined.
“I feel like (the fall) semester gave me kind of the ‘a-ha’ moment of where I think I can succeed … getting hands-on experience and being able to integrate my interests and passions. Pyrolyzing and capturing the carbon was my first, ‘Oh my gosh. I actually did something.’”
The coffee research, she continued, has fueled her ambition to pursue a Ph.D. in chemical engineering.
“Working with coffee is something I’d love to do for the rest of my life,” she said. “That’s where I’m at now.”
She cited a couple of environmentally friendly examples of decaffeinating coffee—the Swiss Water Process and supercritical carbon dioxide extraction.
“Maybe there’s a different way we can decaf coffee and make it more environmentally friendly because when it comes to coffee roasting, a lot of greenhouse gases are emitted,” she said. “Maybe there’s something we can do to make coffee safer and better for the environment.”
Her enthusiasm extends beyond the lab. Hamilton said she can frequently be found sharing her findings and ideas with her Goodman Coffee Roasters customers and colleagues.
“Making coffee is one really big science experiment,” she said with a laugh. “I would definitely say that—with my newfound interest and passions—it has changed the way I see it.
“It’s great because where I work, there are regulars who work in engineering fields and computer science and I get to talk with them and update them on what I’ve been doing. They show a lot of interest in it. It’s really fun to create a little community around coffee science.”
This post was originally published on here
