11th Excellence in Polymer Graduate Research Symposium

Denver, CO- March 22-26, 2015

The eleventh symposium on "Excellence in Polymer Graduate Research" took place at the national ACS meeting at Denver, Colorado on March 22-26, 2015.  The purposes of this symposium are to provide recognition to outstanding graduate students in polymer science and engineering, to foster networking and exposure, and to help develop the careers of future leaders in our field.  We publicized this symposium via the POLY list server, POLY web page, and direct email messages to over 100 departments that are active in polymer research.  We requested that each department nominate one outstanding graduate student to speak on his or her original research in this special symposium.  Each student should fill out an application form and have a nominating letter from the research advisor and a letter from the department head.
 
This year we received 27 submissions, and we were pleased with the quality of the papers.  The symposium was organized into two oral sessions with 16 papers and a poster session with 11 papers. Both the oral and the poster sessions went very well.  There were a lot of stimulating questions during the talks.  The traffic was also heavy during the poster session.
 
As part of the recognition, each student received a certificate plus a cash award.  We were pleased that Dr. Diane Grob Schmidt, the 2015 ACS President, made this symposium a Presidential-Recommended event, personally visited the symposium, and spoke to the students.  Diane compared a student’s career path to a polymerization process, including initiation (where the student is introduced to polymer chemistry in grad school), propagation (where he or she does research or practices polymer chemistry in the workplace), transfer (i.e., change of jobs or fields), and termination (when he or she retires).  A group photo was taken with Dr. Schmidt and Dr. Gobet Advincula, the 2015 Chair of the ACS Polymer Chemistry Division.
 
This symposium was organized by the ACS Polymer Chemistry Division (POLY), and cosponsored by Presidential Event (PRES), Young Chemists Committee (YCC), Division of Professional Relations (PROF), and Society Committee on Education (SOCED).  The symposium had the generous support of POLY and Industrial Advisory Board of the Polymer Division (IAB).  The detailed symposium program is attached below.
 
Symposium Organizing Committee:
H. N. Cheng, USDA
Christopher Ellison, University of Texas
Christine Landry-Coltrain, Eastman Kodak Company
Timothy E. Long, Virginia Tech

Symposium Program

Sponsored by POLY, cosponsored by PRES, SOCED, YCC, and PROF.   
Supported by POLY and Industrial Advisory Board of POLY.  

Oral Session 1. Session Chairs:  Christine Landry-Coltrain, H. N. Cheng   

 Introductory Remarks  
2130008 Post-electrospinning Derivatization of Polymer Nanofibers with Bioactive Species Using Translationally-relevant Chemical Methods 
 Jukuan Zheng, University of Akron
2128456 Sequential Inverse Vulcanization and Electropolymerization for Conductive Plastic Sulfur 
 Philip Thomas Dirlam, University of Arizona
2141023 Manipulating Conjugation in Electronic Polymers: Chemical Sensors and Precursor Routes 
 Jonathan Garrett Weis, MIT - Chemistry
2114540 Poly(Ionic Liquid)s and Their Block Copolymers: Synthesis, Characterization, Self-assembly, and Applications 
 Hongkun He, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
 Break  
2130272 Facile Post-Polymerization Modification of Blocked Isocyanate and Hydrazide Containing Polymers 
 Emily A. Hoff, Univ. of Southern Mississippi
2141117 Sequencing in Step-growth Polymerization: Influence of segment length on thermomechanical properties of polysulfone-containing segmented polyesters
 Joseph Michael Dennis, Virginia Tech - Macro
2140967 Olefin cross-metathesis, a mild, modular and efficient approach towards functionalized cellulose esters 
 Xiangtao Meng, Virginia Tech - Bio
2129404 Scalable Production of Mechanically Tunable Block Polymers from Sugar
 Deborah K. Schneiderman, Univ. of Minnesota
   
Oral Session 2.  Session Chairs: Christopher Ellison, Timothy Long

 Introductory Remarks 
 Recognition of Poster Presenters  
2130293 Unexpected anomalous diffusion in associating protein hydrogels 
 Shengchang Tang, MIT – Chem Eng
2125200 Reducing-environment sensitive synthetic hydrogels for controlled delivery of therapeutics 
 Prathamesh M. Kharkar, Univ. of Delaware
2129494 Photodegradable hydrogels for studying axon guidance and the user-directed formation of neural circuits 
 Tobin Brown, Univ. of Colorado –Chem. Eng.
2127951 Molecular N-Dopants and N-Dopable Conjugated Polymers
 Benjamin Dexter Naab, Stanford Univ.
 Break  
2079240 High-Throughput Screening of Electrochromic Polymers Towards Neutral Colors
 Michael Otley,  Univ. of Connecticut
2127451 Chiral Transmission to Self-Assembling Nanostructures from Circularly Polarized Light Jihyeon Yeom Michigan-Macro
2117592 Polymer-particle rheological analysis of adsorbed cement additives for improved processing 
 Lisa Renee Murray, Purdue Univ.
2124122 Efficient Simulation of the Molecular Scale Behavior of Polymer Melts: Understanding Polymer Dynamics and Rheology
 Nicholas A. Rorrer, Colorado School of Mines
   
POSTER Session

2115619 Fluorescence Conjugated Microporous Polymers with Amino Receptors as Metal Cation Chemosensor 
 Anting Chen, Binghamton Univ.
2121703 The roles of quinoidal character, regioregularity and polydispersity in determining the photovoltaic performance of conjugated copolymers
 Tianyue Zheng, Univ. of Chicago
2129433 Magnetic Core - Fluorescent Conjugated Polymer Shell Nanoparticles Prepared by Surface-Initiated Kumada Polymerization 
 Sourav Chatterjee, Louisiana State Univ.
2128624 Fast Initiating Nickel Precatalysts for ?-Conjugated Polymer Synthesis
 Ariana Hall, Univ. of Michigan - Chemistry
2127769 Growing green polymers using the sun: Organocatalyzed photoredox mediated polymerization 
 Jordan Corinne Theriot, Univ. of Colorado - Chemistry
2114822 Oximes as Reversible Links in Polymer Chemistry: Dynamic Macromolecular Stars 
 Soma Mukherjee, Univ. of Florida
2117597 Molecule to Morphology Chirality-Transfer in ABC Triblock Terpolymers 
 Amrita Sarkar, Univ. of South Carolina
2108481 Solid-State Self-Assembly: for Advanced Electronic and Optical Materials
 Yoonseob Kim, Univ. of Michigan – Chem Eng
2114597 How Processing Affects Dispersion and Thermomechanical Properties of Waterborne Epoxy and Cellulose Nanocrystal Composites
 Natalie Girouard, Georgia Tech
2127378 Functional Polymers via Post-Polymerization Modification of poly(Methionine)
 Eric Gharakhanian, UCLA
2130557 Understanding and improving protein loading in PLGA-PEG nanoparticles
 Sunandini Chopra, MIT – Mech