A team from the Johnson, Olvera de la Cruz, Kulik, and Craig labs demonstrate that embedding a small fraction of force-sensitive mechanophores as cross-links into common polymers produces materials with substantially enhanced ballistic energy dissipation. This establishes a design principle for converting commodity polymers into impact-resilient materials and open directions at the intersection of polymer mechanochemistry and extreme-strain-rate material behavior. Article Link MIT News Item

MONET Senior Investigators Julia Kalow and Rebekka Klausen have been granted Brown Investigator Awards. The Brown Institute for Basic Sciences grants these awards to support bold ideas for curiosity-driven basic research. The awards consist of $2,000,000 each over five years to pursue new research avenues that are highly creative, and for which conventional sources of research funding may not be readily available. Award Announcement Congratulations Julia and Rebekka!

A team from the Olvera de la Cruz lab, with collaborators at UCSD, Duke, and Johns Hopkins, combine small-angle neutron and X-ray scattering and analytical measurements with extensive all-atom and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to examine the structure and dynamics of the polymer network within the crystalline framework of ferritin- Polymer-Integrated Protein Crystals (PIX). Article Link