Mary Kathryn Lee

Mary Kathryn Lee
Chemical Engineer
ExxonMobil Research & Engineering

Mary currently works at ExxonMobil Corporate Research where, for the past 27 years, she has worked on teams that research an array of separation challenges. At present, she is working on two teams. One team is working on Low Energy Separations, a continuing theme in her work and in the industry in general. They are constantly looking to lower their carbon footprint by developing and applying new science in game-changing ways. The other team is working on new chemistry and processes to make low value resources into valuable feedstock using new, ground-breaking technology.

She works with an extremely talented group of scientists, engineers and technicians that bring a variety of knowledge, expertise and experience to a problem and develop creative solutions for testing. Mary’s primary responsibility is to design and build new laboratory test units to answer fundamental questions about new chemistries and processes. She also sometimes deploys new analytical techniques to answer questions about feeds and products that have not been asked before.​

She is also passionately interested in developing and supporting ideas of diversity and inclusion in the field of chemical engineering and in educating young students in STEM fields. She has developed and implemented a whole school science fair model in her home-town charter school. Mary has also chaired the American Institute of Chemical Engineering's Minority Affairs Committee and she is now on the AIChE Board of Directors.