Materials Chemistry by Design and Serendipity

The design and discovery of materials that have new properties that can mimic the behavior of biopolymers or potentially provide solutions for the looming energy crisis remain significant areas of research. Synthetic foldamers, specifically m-phenylene ethynylene (mPE) oligomers, have demonstrated promise as versatile scaffolds for the development of artificial macromolecules that have enzyme-like function. When properly functionalized and collapsed into their helical conformation, mPE foldamers can act as “reactive sieves” that display substrate selective behavior that is conceptually similar to that observed with tRNA synthetase enzymes.

The recent focus on developing green energy technology has created significant interest in using porous materials for the safe storage of clean, gaseous fuels, as well as carbon dioxide capture and sequestration. Recently developed porous materials that meet these criteria – and can be derived from safe, renewable and edible materials such as cyclodextrin and alkali metal salts – have demonstrated exciting properties such as high surface area and unexpected reactivity with entrapped gas molecules.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan and attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where I received my B.S Chemistry in 2003. I received my Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2008 in the laboratory of Prof. Jeff Moore and then moved to Northwestern University where I am currently a postdoctoral research associate with Prof. Fraser Stoddart.