Liddell Research Group
Purdue University Mechanical Engineering and Sustainability Engineering & Environmental Engineering
Heather P.H. Liddell
Assistant Professor
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
about us
Based at Purdue, the Liddell research group applies interdisciplinary engineering approaches to address multiscale research challenges in manufacturing sustainability and mechanics of multilayered systems. Our group includes members from the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Environmental & Ecological Engineering.
Some of our current research interests include:
- industrial decarbonization technologies and strategies
- energy modeling for U.S. production systems
- environmentally extended input-output modeling
- life cycle assessment for early-stage manufacturing technologies
- sustainable supply chains and circularity
- energy and environmental consequences of the electric vehicle transition
- fracture mechanics in multilayer systems
- adhesion of paints and coatings
For more details on our work, take a look at the recent Purdue media and news about our group below, and check out our People, Teaching, and Publications pages.
recent purdue media featuring our group
- October 22, 2025: Heather Liddell Receives the 2025 ACLCA Michael Levy Rising Star Award
- October 15, 2025: Heyichen Xu Wins First Place at National Sustainability Conference
- October 31, 2024: EEE Graduate Students Come Home with 1st and 2nd Place Poster Awards from ACLCA
- January 29, 2024: Heather Liddell, EEE's Newest Assistant Professor, Truly Understands the "Persistent Pursuit."
news
| Nov 25, 2025 | Many congratulations to group member Catherinne Mejia Melara, who successfully defended her M.S. thesis on Friday, November 21, 2025! Cathy’s work, a collaboration between Purdue’s Sustainability Engineering and Food Science departments, explored the impact of preservation techniques on different aspects of quality, microbial safety, and environmental sustainability in dairy forage hays. Post-graduation, Cathy will be starting an exciting new job in industry (at Wessler Engineering)! |
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| Sep 28, 2025 | The Liddell Research Group recently returned from a great trip to Atlanta for the 2025 American Center for Life Cycle Assessment (ACLCA) conference. Congratulations to PhD student Heyichen Xu, who won first place in the student poster competition for her research poster, “How Old is Too Old? Quantifying the Problem of Temporal Representativeness in Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) Data.” Dr. Liddell won ACLCA’s 2025 Michael Levy Rising Star Award. |
| Jul 26, 2025 | Congratulations to Tripta Bhattacharjee on his new first-author paper in Procedia CIRP: Re-investment Rebound Dynamic in the Cement Industry. Tripta previously presented this research at the CIRP LCE conference (in Manchester, UK) in April 2025. |
| Jun 14, 2025 | New papers: we are excited to share two new papers from our group, both published in June 2025: one in Resources, Conservation, and Recycling and one in the Journal of Advanced Manufacturing and Processing. Congratulations to the authors! |
| Apr 17, 2025 | Congratulations to Beth Kelley for successfully defending her M.S. thesis, “Data foundation for a simultaneously physically and environmentally extended economic input-output model framework”. Well done!! |
