Millennium Café

We all like to dream about “what could be.” As chemists who make materials, this often takes the form of drawing pictures of what we want, based on our predictions of what the material might do. The challenge then becomes actually making what we designed. We can now design, and then actually make, a large megalibrary of nanoparticles with previously unimaginable complexity, all using simple benchtop chemistry and standard laboratory glassware. This begins to shift the narrative from “what is possible to make” to “what do we want to make.”

Shashank Priya | Associate Vice President for Research and JP Maria | Materials Science & Engineering

The Multidisciplinary University Initiative (MURI) program is considered as one of the top opportunities for conducting team-based fundamental science investigations. MURI projects involve teams of researchers investigating high priority topics and opportunities that intersect more than one traditional technical discipline. A typical team consists of 4 – 6 researchers. Projects are funded for 5 years with total funding ranging from $5 – 7.5M. Each year 20 – 30 projects are funded under this program. This presentation will provide an overview of the MURI program and discuss strategies for Penn State researchers to develop stronger efforts. Team formation, past track record and innovation is key for proposing these projects.

Sean Knecht | Sven Bilén | School of Engineering Design, Technology, and Professional Programs

Since its inception in 2015, the Low-Temperature Plasma Science and Engineering Research group has forged cross-disciplinary collaborations to investigate a myriad of opportunities in medicine, energy, environment, and materials science. We will provide an update on the results of some collaborations, as well as advancements in experimental capabilities. Finally, we invite members of the Penn State community to engage with us in an emerging broader plasma science and engineering initiative to maximize the potential of this transformational technology.

With longer life expectancies, the prevalence of age-related diseases has been increasing, and as such there is a need to develop biomedical devices to address these emerging issues. Inspired by absorption columns, which are routinely used in industry to remove pollutants from chemical streams, my research focuses on the design of biomedical membranes for capturing unwanted toxins in the body. One significant benefit of using polymer membranes is their tunable binding affinity to target molecules using specific chemical, physical, or biological features. One example is using properly designed polymers to remove cancer chemotherapy drugs that are not taken up by the target tumor during chemotherapy to reduce the drugs’ toxic side effects.

Ning Yi | Cheng Group

Current gas sensors are mostly rigid, bulky, and require significant energy to operate. In this talk, I will introduce the use of laser-induced porous carbon materials to construct wearable gas sensors to detect toxic gas molecules such as nitrogen dioxide. These wearable gas sensors are flexible, stretchable, and highly sensitive to various target gas species. 

Can we chemically break down cellulose fibers into functional nanomaterials which could provide new strategies for treating water, for filtering blood? Can we convert proteins into particle gels for accelerated wound healing, disease modeling, and tissue engineering? These are just a few questions motivating work in the Soft Materials Laboratory (SMaL).