MSE Talk: Todd Emrick, UMass Amherst

Speaker: Todd Emrick, UMass Amherst

Title: Connecting Biological Functionality with Polymer Architecture: Nanoscale and Mesoscale Materials Opportunities

Abstract: This lecture will apply concepts and methods of organic and polymer chemistry to targets in materials science, with the objective of producing fundamentally new and useful structures. Topics to be presented hinge on translating synthetic advances to create materials applications, including the synthesis of novel polymer zwitterions that have generated a surprising breadth of new findings, ranging from nanocomposite electronic materials to interfacial properties in fluids and in the presence of living cells and tissue. Moreover, striking properties of these types of polymers at interfaces will be discussed, including in fluids, as mesoscale materials, and as components of ‘hard-soft’ materials interfaces.

Bio: Todd Emrick is a Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and adjunct faculty member at the UMass Medical School in Worcester, MA. He earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Juniata College in Pennsylvania (1992) and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry with Professor Philip E. Eaton at the University of Chicago (1997). Following postdoctoral work in polymer synthesis at the University of California Berkeley with Professor Jean Fréchet, he began his independent position at UMass Amherst in 2001. While at UMass, his research has focused on the intersection of organic and polymer synthesis, with outlets in materials science and engineering. Advances from Emrick’s group have been recognized by the Carl S. Marvel Award for creative polymer chemistry (ACS Polymer Division), election to the National Academy of Inventors, selection as the UMass Amherst College of Natural Sciences Outstanding Researcher and the UMass Conti Fellow for Outstanding University Researchers. He is the prior Director of the NSF-supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) on Polymers at UMass Amherst (2008- 2017) and is an investigator in research programs supported by the NSF, DOE, DOD, and NIH.