Donald A. Tomalia (born September 5, 1938) is an American chemist who is known as one of the early discoverers of dendrimers.
Tomalia earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, a master's degree from Bucknell University and a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry from Michigan State University. He worked at Dow Chemical for many years as a research scientist then moved to the Michigan Molecular Institute as a Senior Lead Scientist. In 1979, Tomalia first reported on the synthesis [1] of dendrimers, which have been used in nanotechnology and pharmaceuticals. [2] The first dendrimer synthesis was noted by winning the Leonardo da Vinci Prize (Paris, 1996).
In 1990, he joined the Michigan Molecular Institute (MMI) as Professor and Director of Nanoscale Chemistry &Architecture (1990–1999). In 1992, Tomalia founded his own company, Dendritech. The company was purchased by Dow Chemical a few years later. Tomalia was the scientific director of the Center for Biologic Nanotechnology at the University of Michigan Medical School. In 2001, Tomalia started Dendritic NanoTechnologies at Central Michigan University; Starpharma of Australia provided seed money for the venture and Dow took an equity position a few years later. [3]
In 2010, Tomalia founded NanoSynthons, LLC, in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. [4] In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. [5] He has been named a Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate. [6]
Richard Errett Smalley was an American chemist who was the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry, Physics, and Astronomy at Rice University. In 1996, along with Robert Curl, also a professor of chemistry at Rice, and Harold Kroto, a professor at the University of Sussex, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of a new form of carbon, buckminsterfullerene, also known as buckyballs. He was an advocate of nanotechnology and its applications.
Dendrimers are highly ordered, branched polymeric molecules. Synonymous terms for dendrimer include arborols and cascade molecules. Typically, dendrimers are symmetric about the core, and often adopt a spherical three-dimensional morphology. The word dendron is also encountered frequently. A dendron usually contains a single chemically addressable group called the focal point or core. The difference between dendrons and dendrimers is illustrated in the top figure, but the terms are typically encountered interchangeably.
Armand Paul Alivisatos is a Greek-American chemist and academic administrator who has served as the 14th president of the University of Chicago since September 2021. He is a pioneer in nanomaterials development and an authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use in biomedical and renewable energy applications. He was ranked fifth among the world's top 100 chemists for the period 2000–2010 in the list released by Thomson Reuters.
Sir James Fraser Stoddart is a British-American chemist who is Chair Professor in Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. He has also been Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry and head of the Stoddart Mechanostereochemistry Group in the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University in the United States. He works in the area of supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology. Stoddart has developed highly efficient syntheses of mechanically-interlocked molecular architectures such as molecular Borromean rings, catenanes and rotaxanes utilising molecular recognition and molecular self-assembly processes. He has demonstrated that these topologies can be employed as molecular switches. His group has even applied these structures in the fabrication of nanoelectronic devices and nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). His efforts have been recognized by numerous awards, including the 2007 King Faisal International Prize in Science. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Ben Feringa and Jean-Pierre Sauvage in 2016 for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.
Jean M.J. Fréchet is a French-American chemist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for his work on polymers including polymer-supported chemistry, chemically amplified photoresists, dendrimers, macroporous separation media, and polymers for therapeutics. Ranked among the top 10 chemists in 2021, he has authored nearly 900 scientific paper and 200 patents including 96 US patents. His research areas include organic synthesis and polymer chemistry applied to nanoscience and nanotechnology with emphasis on the design, fundamental understanding, synthesis, and applications of functional macromolecules.
Craig Jon Hawker is an Australian-born chemist. His research has focused on the interface between organic and polymer chemistry, with emphasis on the design, synthesis, and application of well-defined macromolecular structures in biotechnology, microelectronics, and surface science. Hawker holds more than 45 U.S. patents, and he has co-authored over 300 papers in the areas of nanotechnology, materials science, and chemistry. He was listed as one of the top 100 most cited chemists worldwide over the decade 1992–2002, and again in 2000–2010.
Omar M. Yaghi is the James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, an affiliate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Founding Director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute, and an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences as well as the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
The Michigan Molecular Institute (MMI) was an advanced polymer research and education organization based in Midland, Michigan which ceased operations in 2015. MMI was founded in 1971 as an independent, nonprofit research and education organization for the purpose of conducting basic and applied research in polymer science and technology. The research focus was primarily on materials science, with specialties in the fields of photonics, membranes, specialty coatings, unique delivery systems, analytical testing and other areas. In later years, the Institute modified its mission statement to emphasize technological development with a commercial orientation in mind. In addition to its research initiatives, MMI served as the launching pad for several spinout businesses, including Dendritech, a commercial dendrimer production facility; Impact Analytical, which provides analytical testing to a wide variety of companies; Oxazogen, a commercialization company in the development and manufacture of coating materials, production of specialty polymers and ongoing polymer research; and the Midland Information Technology Consortium (MITCON), which provides IT services and support to more than 35 non-profit organizations.
Egbert (Bert) Willem Meijer is a Dutch organic chemist, known for his work in the fields of supramolecular chemistry, materials chemistry and polymer chemistry. Meijer, who is distinguished professor of Molecular Sciences at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Academy Professor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, is considered one of the founders of the field of supramolecular polymer chemistry. Meijer is a prolific author, sought-after academic lecturer and recipient of multiple awards in the fields of organic and polymer chemistry.
Established in 2005, Polymer Factory concentrates on developing well defined dendrimers and dendron based on 2,2-bis(methylol)propionic acid, where the company has the exclusive right to the production, marketing, and sales of such materials. The company also provides tailor-made hyperbranched polymers. Polymer Factory's research lab is located in Stockholm, Sweden.
Didier Astruc carried out his studies in chemistry in Rennes. After a Ph. D. with professor R. Dabard in organometallic chemistry, he did post-doctoral studies with professor R. R. Schrock at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the U.S. and later a sabbatical year with professor K. P. C. Vollhardt at the University of California at Berkeley. He became a CNRS Director of research in Rennes, then in 1983 full Professor of Chemistry at the University Bordeaux 1. He is known for his work on electron-reservoir complexes and dendritic molecular batteries, catalytic processes using nanoreactors and molecular recognition using gold nanoparticles and metallodendrimers.
Poly(amidoamine), or PAMAM, is a class of dendrimer which is made of repetitively branched subunits of amide and amine functionality. PAMAM dendrimers, sometimes referred to by the trade name Starburst, have been extensively studied since their synthesis in 1985, and represent the most well-characterized dendrimer family as well as the first to be commercialized. Like other dendrimers, PAMAMs have a sphere-like shape overall, and are typified by an internal molecular architecture consisting of tree-like branching, with each outward 'layer', or generation, containing exponentially more branching points. This branched architecture distinguishes PAMAMs and other dendrimers from traditional polymers, as it allows for low polydispersity and a high level of structural control during synthesis, and gives rise to a large number of surface sites relative to the total molecular volume. Moreover, PAMAM dendrimers exhibit greater biocompatibility than other dendrimer families, perhaps due to the combination of surface amines and interior amide bonds; these bonding motifs are highly reminiscent of innate biological chemistry and endow PAMAM dendrimers with properties similar to that of globular proteins. The relative ease/low cost of synthesis of PAMAM dendrimers (especially relative to similarly-sized biological molecules such as proteins and antibodies), along with their biocompatibility, structural control, and functionalizability, have made PAMAMs viable candidates for application in drug development, biochemistry, and nanotechnology.
Teri W. Odom is an American chemist and materials scientist. She is the chair of the chemistry department, the Joan Husting Madden and William H. Madden, Jr. Professor of Chemistry, and a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University. She is affiliated with the university's International Institute for Nanotechnology, Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, Northwestern Initiative for Manufacturing Science and Innovation, Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences Graduate Program, and department of applied physics.
William Dichtel is the Robert L. Letsinger Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University and a 2015 MacArthur Fellow who has helped pioneer the development of porous polymers known as covalent organic frameworks. Dichtel was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018. In 2020, Dichtel was selected as the 2020 Laureate in Chemistry of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. He also founded Cylopure, a university spin-off that seeks to bring to market water filtration with cyclodextrin polymers.
Raoul Kopelman was a scientist, inventor, and the Richard Smalley Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry, Physics, Applied Physics, Biophysics, Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Biology at the University of Michigan. Amongst other accomplishments, he was well known for developing the Hoshen-Kopelman algorithm. He was also amongst the first scientists pushing to establish the field of nanotechnology.
Nathan C. Gianneschi is the Jacob & Rosaline Cohn Professor of Chemistry, Materials Science & Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University and the Associate Director for the International Institute for Nanotechnology. Gianneschi's lab takes an interdisciplinary approach to nanomaterials research, with a focus on multifunctional materials for biomedical applications, programmed interactions with biomolecules and cells, and basic research into nanoscale materials design, synthesis and characterization.
Jan Cornelis Maria van Hest is a Dutch scientist of organic chemistry, best known for his research regarding polymersomes and nanoreactors. He currently holds the position of professor of bioorganic chemistry at Eindhoven University of Technology and is scientific director at the Institute of Complex Molecular Systems. Among the awards he has received, he was one of the recipients of the 2020 Spinoza Prize.
Hamid Ghandehari is an Iranian-American drug delivery research scientist, and a professor in the Departments of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah. His research is focused in recombinant polymers for drug and gene delivery, nanotoxicology of dendritic and inorganic constructs, water-soluble polymers for targeted delivery and poly(amidoamine) dendrimers for oral delivery.
Virgil Percec is a Romanian-American chemist and P. Roy Vagelos Chair and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Expert in organic, macromolecular and supramolecular chemistry including self-assembly, biological membrane mimics, complex chiral systems, and catalysis. Pioneered the fields of liquid crystals with complex architecture, supramolecular dendrimers, Janus dendrimers and glycodendrimers, organic Frank-Kasper phases and quasicrystals, supramolecular polymers, helical chirality, Ni-catalyzed cross-coupling and multiple living and self-interrupted polymerizations. Most of these concepts were inspired by Nature and biological principles.
Lajos Peter Balogh, mainly referred to as Lou Balogh, is a Hungarian-American scientist known for his research on polymers, dendrimer nanocomposites, and nanomedicine. Balogh is the editor-in-chief of Precision Nanomedicine (PRNANO). Based on his career-long citation numbers, he belongs to the World's Top 2% Scientists.