NEWS — 2023

Danielle was elected Vice-Chair of Area 08A (Polymers) of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers!

The group welcomes the new cohort of Ph.D. students! We are excited to host ChemE rotations for Vidushi Bansal (Autumn, University of California, Berkeley), Chloe Wick (Autumn, University of Minnesota), Chloe Wen (Winter, Northeastern University), and Michelle Quan (Winter, University of Minnesota), as well as an MSE rotation for Priya Ganesh (Autumn, MIT). Welcome!

Eleanor passed her qualifying exam in Chemical Engineering! Congratulations!

Danielle was named one of this year’s 35 Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review! Congrats to all of this year’s innovators!

Danielle shared our work on “Molecular-Scale Engineering of Stimuli-Responsive Polymer Hydrogels” at the Nanoscience and Nanoengineering Institute at University of California, Berkeley and at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. Thanks for hosting inspiring and stimulating visits!

We are really proud of our summer researchers for their creativity and contributions! We will miss you all in the lab as you return to the classroom this fall. Thanks to mentors Mike Burroughs, Alana Gudinas, and Brendan Wirtz, and generous support from the SURF, Chemical Engineering REU, and UGVR programs at Stanford.

Danielle delivered a keynote lecture in the Context, Connections, and Community Symposium (C3S) in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. Thanks to the ARDEI committee for hosting a wonderful event!

Mike was selected for a Bio-X Travel Award! This award supported his attendance at the ACS Fall Meeting in San Francisco, where Mike was also recognized as an ACS PMSE Future Faculty Scholar.

Mike was selected for the Distinguished Young Scholar Seminar (DYSS) Series in Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington! His seminar featured his lastest work on Illuminating polymer resins for sustainable 3D printing. Congratulations, Mike!

Welcome to our summer researchers!! Kenny Hernandez and Ally Yun are current Stanford undergraduate students joining us through the Department of Chemical Engineering Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU); Ava Conyer is a student at Howard University joining us through the School of Engineering’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF); and Yujia Bian is a student at Peking University joining us through the School of Engineering’s Chinese Undergraduate Visiting Research (UGVR) Program. Welcome!

Congratulations to the Class of 2023!! Winnie and Christopher completed their Chemical Engineering BS degrees, and Gatha completed her Materials Science & Engineering MS degree. We are so proud of everything these three have done during their time at Stanford and excited about what’s next for each of them!

Danielle was awarded an ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator Award! We thank the ACS PRF Board of Directors for supporting our studies of “Anthracene-Directed Reinforcement and Stabilization of Polymer Nanocomposites.”

Our proposal to investigate the “Structure of Ion-Binding Repeat Proteins for Biomolecular Actuation” was selected for a Macromolecular Structure Knowledge Center Training Program Award. Thanks to Sarafan ChEM-H for this new opportunity to conduct crystallization and structure determination of our proteins!

Marina, Alana, and Mike presented their work in the 11th Annual Stanford Polymer Collective Poster Symposium. Congratulations to Alana for winning a Judges’ Poster Award!

Danielle received the Spring 2023 Arthur K. Doolittle Award for her talk, “Gelation Dynamics During Photocrosslinking of Polymer Nanocomposite Hydrogels”! This award “recognizes an outstanding presentation during a PMSE symposium at each of the Fall and Spring ACS National Meetings.”

Congratulations to Winnie Huang and Ke Jin for accepting graduate school offers! Winnie will pursue a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Princeton University, and Ke will pursue a PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. We look forward to learning about their future research endeavors!

Danielle was selected for the 2023 Stanford Asian American Faculty Award! Thanks to the Asian American Activities Center (A³C) Advisory Board for the kind recognition and advocacy to the Asian, Asian American, and broader Stanford communities. Congratulations to all of this year’s awardees!

Brendan was selected for the 2023 BioPACIFIC Materials Innovation Platform Summer School! He will visit UCLA for a week to learn more about scalable production of bio-derived building blocks and polymers.

Mike was awarded a Society of Rheology Student-Member Travel Grant and a DSOFT Future Investigator Travel (FIT) Award to attend the XIXth International Congress on Rheology in Athens, Greece. Congrats!

Winnie Huang and Brendan Wirtz were awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships!! Congratulations to both!

We are excited to officially welcome Eleanor Quirk (Chemical Engineering PhD student) to the lab! She plans to explore photocrosslinking and recycling of 3D-printing resins in collaboration with the Congreve Lab.

The group had a great time presenting our work at the 2023 APS March Meeting in Las Vegas! Marina, Louis, Alana, Mike, and Brendan all gave fantastic presentations. Congratulations to Alana for winning the 3rd Place Poster Award in the Division of Polymer Physics!

Congratulations Mike for his selection as a 2023 ACS PMSE Future Faculty Scholar! He will share his research in a symposium at the ACS Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Danielle was featured as an “Early-Career Investigator” at the inaugural Peptide Materials GRC in Galveston, Texas. Thanks to organizers Honggang Cui and Matt Tirrell for supporting a vibrant community of researchers in peptide, polypeptide, and protein-based materials!