Speakers
Hailemariam Gebru is a senior researcher at Materials Science and Engineering Directorate of Bio and Emerging Technology Institute (BETin), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Chemistry (2007 G.C) from Dilla University and MSc in Physical Chemistry (2011) from Haramaya University. Hailemariam has received his Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from Nanjing Tech University (Dec. 2018), China. His research interest mainly focuses on synthesis of catechol pendant polypeptoids and surface functionalization of nanostructured materials. Recently, Hailemariam has been working on derivatization of starch and cellulose to develop polymeric composite materials for environmental and energy applications. Overall, he is keen to work on stimuli-responsive materials from novel biopolymer building blocks.
Abdon Pena-Francesch is an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan. He leads the BioInspired Materials Lab, an interdisciplinary research group working on materials science, polymer chemistry, and soft matter engineering to develop solutions for healthcare, robotics, and the environment. He obtained his PhD from Penn State University, and was a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. His work has been recognized by multiple awards including the AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award, the American Chemical Society PRF New Investigator Award, MRS Sustainability in Action Award, and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers.
Sarah Perry is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received BS degrees in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, as well as an MS degree from the University of Arizona, and a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Perry was also a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Chicago. Her research interests are highly interdisciplinary, and utilize self-assembly, molecular engineering, and microfluidic technologies to understand the fundamental principles behind materials design to inform solutions to real-world challenges. She has been recognized with a number of teaching awards, along with the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the 2024 ACS Macro Letters/Biomacromolecules/Macromolecules Young Investigator Award.
Eleftheria Roumeli is an Assistant Professor in the Materials Science & Engineering Department of the University of Washington. With a focus on developing and understanding sustainable materials, her research group explores new families of bioplastics, biocomposites, and environmentally friendly construction materials derived from biological building blocks, and specifically from biopolymers. The group investigates the relationships between structure, processing, mechanical properties and life cycle impacts in these novel classes of sustainable materials. Prior to joining UW, Roumeli completed her postdoctoral training at the California Institute of Technology (2017-2020) and ETH Zurich (2015-2017) – both in Departments of Mechanical Engineering. She earned her BS (2009) and PhD in Physics (2014) from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, where her research focused on understanding the structure-property relationships in synthetic polymer nanocomposite materials.
Valentin Rodionov began his undergraduate studies in 1997 at the Higher Chemical College of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2000, after moving to the United States, he was accepted to the University of Maryland and promoted directly into the graduate program without having to complete an undergraduate degree. He earned his MS in 2002 and enrolled in the PhD program at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. At Scripps, Rodionov worked under the guidance of Profs. M.G. Finn and K.B. Sharpless. His thesis project focused on mechanistic investigation of copper (I) catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition and provided the first glimpse of the inner workings of this most widely used "click" reaction (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2005, 44, p. 2210; and J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, p. 12696). As a postdoctoral fellow with Professor J.M.J. Fréchet at the University of California, Berkeley, Rodionov applied the powerful “click” chemistry approach to the development of enzyme-inspired catalytic polymers (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2010, 132, p. 2570). Since late 2010, Rodionov has been an Assistant Professor of Chemical Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. The group has transitioned to Case Western Reserve University in 2018. His research interests are broadly focused on catalysis with soft materials and chemistry of nonbenzenoid allotropes of carbon (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, p. 17999).
Brent Sumerlin is the George Bergen Butler Chair in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida. He received his undergraduate degree from North Carolina State University in 1998 and later earned his PhD in Polymer Science & Engineering at the University of Southern Mississippi under the guidance of Charles McCormick. After completing his PhD, Sumerlin worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor/Postdoctoral Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University under Krzysztof Matyjaszewski. In 2005, he took a faculty position at Southern Methodist University before moving to the University of Florida in 2012. Sumerlin is an associate editor for ACS Macro Letters and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has received awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, ACS Leadership Development Award, Journal of Polymer Science Innovation Award, Biomacromolecules/Macromolecules Young Investigator Award, the Hanwha-Total IUPAC Award, Mark Scholar Award, and the UF Doctoral Dissertation Mentoring/Advising Award.
Jeff Ting received his BS in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas. Ting received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, working with Frank Bates and Theresa Reineke on synthesizing tunable polymers for oral drug delivery. During his doctoral studies, he was a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the AIChE Pharmaceutical Discovery, Development and Manufacturing Student Award, and the University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. These distinctions recognized his contributions to outlining macromolecular design strategies that can solubilize highly hydrophobic, small-molecule active pharmaceutical ingredients. Afterward, he worked as a NIST-CHiMaD Postdoctoral Fellow with Matt Tirrell as part of the Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD), supported by NIST and the Materials Genome Initiative. His work focused on understanding the fundamental static and dynamic properties of polyelectrolyte complex assemblies. In 2020, Jeff joined 3M as a Senior Polymer Scientist as part of the Materials Informatics (MI) Group in the Corporate Research Materials Laboratory. He was a lead experimentalist in launching a broad effort to strategically apply MI tools and data-driven methodologies for industrial materials research and product development workflows. He was recognized as one of 12 individuals for the 2021 Young Observers Program by the U.S. National Committee of IUPAC. In 2022, Ting became a Senior Scientist and the first employee at a venture-backed stealth biotech startup, Nanite, in Boston, MA. He currently works on accelerating polymeric nanoparticle development for nonviral gene delivery, leading projects on AI-driven design and automated materials synthesis/biological screening. These results have contributed to a $10M+ rounds of financing, securing strategic partnerships with the Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease Research Foundation, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Matthew Webber is the Keating-Crawford Collegiate Professor of Engineering, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, and the Director of the Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on applying supramolecular chemistry to enhance biomaterials and drug delivery, with an emphasis on rationally designed non-covalent interactions. Webber earned his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University. He completed an NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. His accolades include the American Diabetes Association Pathway Accelerator Award, JDRF Career Development Award, NSF CAREER Award, and the AIChE Owens-Corning Award. In 2023, he was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).