Join the College of Engineering for an inaugural lecture, "Building materials at the nanoscale with molecular self-assembly: Seeing is believing!" by Distinguished Professor of Materials Science Darrin Pochan. A reception will follow the lecture.

ABSTRACT

All living organisms rely on molecular self-assembly to build biomaterials that provide functions crucial for survival. From proteins to DNA, biomolecules have all of the information needed to form exquisite shapes that can change in response to a particular cue to provide function. These molecular building blocks can organize in a hierarchical fashion in order to build functional materials spanning the nanoscale all the way through scales involving entire living organisms. With the proper molecular design, one can create synthetic molecules that can mimic their biological counterparts and produce new nanostructures and materials through simple solution assembly but without the billions of years of evolution underlying nature. After building new nanostructure, one then needs to literally see if the final result is either what was expected or involves a new discovery. This is where electron microscopy images of nanoscale materials is critical to the performance and understanding of molecular self-assembly research. I will present examples of collaborative research to design new molecules for self-assembly with microscope images providing the proof of both expected nanostructure and unexpected discoveries.

BIOGRAPHY
Darrin Pochan is currently Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and holds appointments in the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Delaware. Since joining the MSE department in 1999 after a Ph.D. in polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD, he has developed a research program around the construction of new materials and nanostructures via molecular solution assembly mechanisms. Areas of focus are polymer and biomolecular self-assembly, biomaterials, and materials for nanotechnology and sustainable materials. His honors include an NSF Career Award, the DuPont Young Faculty Award, the Dillon medal from the American Physical Society and Fellowship in the American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, and American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. Darrin recently served as Chair of MSE at UD from 2014-2022 and as Editor in Chief of Soft Matter from 2017-2022 published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in the United Kingdom.