{"id":1680,"date":"2016-03-23T14:51:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T19:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?post_type=profile&#038;p=1680"},"modified":"2026-04-09T14:01:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T18:01:49","slug":"scott-bunch","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/profile\/scott-bunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Scott Bunch, PhD"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>In the News<\/h3>\n<div class=\"news-callout\"><ul class=\"news_list category_1302\"><li class=\"post_169081\">\n<h4 class=\"news_post_title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2025\/11\/13\/a-polymer-that-defies-nature-the-first-molecularly-impermeable-plastic\/\">A Polymer That Defies Nature: The First Molecularly Impermeable Plastic<\/a><\/h4>\n<span class=\"date\">November 13, 2025<\/span>\n<p class=\"excerpt\">For decades, scientists believed all plastics shared one unavoidable weakness: no matter how dense or strong, gases could always slip through. Even the toughest polymers, from bulletproof Kevlar to everyday food packaging, may look solid, but at the molecular level, tiny gas molecules can still sneak through. That\u2019s why potato chips go stale and packaged food loses its crispness.\u00a0\u00a0\r\nNow, a collaboration between researchers at Boston University\u2019s College of Engineering, MIT, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Massachusetts and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has overturned that assumption. In a study published today in\u00a0Nature, the team reports the discovery of the first\u00a0polymer that is molecularly impermeable; a man-made material that acts as a perfect barrier to gas molecules. <a class=\"more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2025\/11\/13\/a-polymer-that-defies-nature-the-first-molecularly-impermeable-plastic\/\">[ More ]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":14935,"template":"","affiliation":[940,939,200],"department":[136,131],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/1680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14935"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/1680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160832,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/1680\/revisions\/160832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"affiliation","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/affiliation?post=1680"},{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=1680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}