Biodegradable plastics are plastics that can be decomposed by the action of living organisms, usually microbes, into water, carbon dioxide, and biomass. Biodegradable plastics are commonly produced with renewable raw materials, micro-organisms, petrochemicals, or combinations of all three.
Stephen Z. D. Cheng is a Chinese-American polymer scientist and chemical engineer. Cheng is the R.C.Musson & Trustees Professor of Polymer Science, and was the former Dean of the College of Polymer Science & Polymer Engineering at the University of Akron.
Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science is located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. A school within Princeton University, which is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, it provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in six departments: chemical and biological engineering, civil and environmental engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and operations research and financial engineering. It has more than 1,400 undergraduates, 620 graduate students and 147 faculty members in its six departments.
Zhenan Bao is a chemical engineer. She serves as K. K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Chemistry and Material Science and Engineering. She served as the Department Chair of Chemical Engineering from 2018 to 2022. Bao is known for her work on organic field-effect transistors and organic semiconductors, for applications including flexible electronics and electronic skin.
Nanotransfer printing (nTP) is a purely additive and high resolution metal printing technique. It mainly relies on the principle of surface chemistry - chemically modified surfaces act as interfacial "release" or "glue" layers to aid in transfer printing nano-structured metal ink from relief features to a surface of interest. The nTP can be simply envisioned as "a process of signature stamping using rubber-stamp". In a rubber stamping, conventionally crafted signature/logo on a rubber stamp is transferred or replicated onto a paper surfaces using organic dye or ink while in nTP, nanolithographically created structures on silicon or PDMS "stamp" are transferred or printed on other surfaces such as glass or polymers using metal ink. nTP has found wide applications in various areas including electronics, chemical sensing, spintronics, and plasmonics. The technique has been successfully implemented for creating various functional structures having sub-100 nm spatial resolution. It was invented by Yueh-Lin Loo.
Emily A. Carter is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE), the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment (ACEE), and Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University. She is also a member of the executive management team at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), serving as Senior Strategic Advisor and Associate Laboratory Director for Applied Materials and Sustainability Sciences.
Matthew V. Tirrell is an American chemical engineer. In 2011 he became the founding Pritzker Director and dean of the Institute for Molecular Engineering (IME) at the University of Chicago, in addition to serving as senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. Tirrell's research specializes in the manipulation and measurement of polymer surface properties, polyelectrolyte complexation, and biomedical nanoparticles.
Steve Granick is an American scientist and educator. In 2023 he joined the University of Massachusetts-Amherst as the Robert Barrett Endowed Chair of Polymer Science and Engineering, with joint appointment in the Chemistry, Physics, and Chemical Engineering Departments after serving as director of the Institute for Basic Science Center for Soft and Living Matter, an interdisciplinary blue-sky research center in Ulsan, South Korea that pursues basic science research. Until 2015 he was professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Yang Shao-Horn is a Chinese American scholar, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and a member of Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is known for research on understanding and controlling of processes for storing electrons in chemical bonds towards zero-carbon energy and chemicals.
Julia Ann Kalow is an assistant professor of chemistry at Northwestern University. She is primarily a synthetic chemist, who works on polymers, photochemistry and tissue engineering. She is interested in synthetic strategies that can turn molecular structure and chemical reactivity into macroscopic properties. She has been awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Thieme Award and was selected by the University of Chicago as a Rising Star in Chemistry.
LaShanda Teresa James Korley is a Distinguished Professor of Materials Science at the University of Delaware and an expert in soft matter, polymers, and nature-inspired materials. On a larger scale, Korley is also working on developing strategies and technologies to prevent plastic waste in landfills and oceans by upcycling plastic waste to more valuable products. She leads such efforts through the Center for Plastics Innovation, the Center for Research in Soft Matter and Polymers, and also the Center for Hybrid, Active, and Responsive Materials (CHARM). Korley was awarded the 2019 National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers Lloyd N. Ferguson Young Scientist Award for Excellence in Research.
Thomas H. Epps, III is an American chemist and the Thomas & Kipp Gutshall Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware. He has a joint appointment in Materials Science & Engineering, and an affiliated appointment in Biomedical Engineering. He serves as the director of the Center for Research in Soft Matter & Polymers, the director of the Center for Hybrid, Active, and Responsive Materials, and the co-director of the Center for Plastics Innovations. His research considers the design, synthesis, characterization, and application of nanostructure-containing polymers related to biobased materials, drug delivery, alternative energy (batteries), nanotemplating, and composite-based personal-protective equipment. He is also the co-founder of Lignolix, which is focused on the valorization of biomass waste.
Rodney Dewayne Priestley is an American chemical engineer and professor at Princeton University. His research considers the phase transitions of polymers and their application in electronic devices and healthcare. In 2020 he was made the Princeton University Vice Dean of Innovation. He was named dean of The Graduate School effective June 1, 2022.
Raffaele Mezzenga is a soft condensed matter scientist, currently heading the Laboratory of Food and Soft Materials at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He is among the 0.1% most cited scientists according to the Clarivate 2023 Highly Cited Researchers list in the cross-field discipline.
Luisa Whittaker-Brooks is an American chemist who is an associate professor at the University of Utah. She was named a L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science honouree in 2013 and one of Chemical & Engineering News' Talented 12 in 2017.
The John H. Dillon Medal is a medal that has been awarded annually by the American Physical Society (APS) since 1983. The recipients are young polymer physicists chosen for "outstanding accomplishment and unusual promise in research in polymer physics" One medal is awarded each year to a nominee who received their terminal degree less than 12 years prior to nomination. The award consists of a $2,000 prize, and $1000 allowance for traveling to the APS March Meeting to present their work, and receive the medal. The award is sponsored by Elsevier.
Anne Marie Mayes was an American material science and engineer and a Toyota professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and MacVicar faculty fellow until 2006. She was the first woman to be promoted from assistant professor to tenured professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. Mayes focused her research on lithium polymer batteries and the role of polymers in environmental issues. The Anne M. Mayes '86 Fellowship for graduate students at MIT is named in her honor.
Arthi Jayaraman is an Indian-American scientist who is the Centennial Term Professor for Excellence in Research and Education at the University of Delaware. Her research considers the development of computational models to better understand polymer nanocomposites and biomaterials. Jayaraman was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2020.
Rachel A. Segalman is the Edward Noble Kramer Professor and Department Chair of Chemical Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Her laboratory works on semiconducting block polymers, polymeric ionic liquids, and hybrid thermoelectric materials. She is the associated director of the Center for Materials for Water Energy System, an associate editor of ACS Macro Letters, and co-editor of the Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Lynn Walker is a professor of chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research considers the rheology of complex fluids and how nanostructure impacts the behavior of complex systems. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Society of Rheology, and the American Physical Society.
