Congratulations to MONET team member Bradley Olsen on being named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society !

Congratulations to Rebekka Klausen, recipient of the 2021 ACS Award in Pure Chemistry ! Quoting Jillian Buriak (U. Alberta) in C&EN: “Professor Klausen’s work on polysilane chemistry is absolutely groundbreaking not only from a nanoscience viewpoint, but due to the smashing of preconceived notions of silicon chemistry, silicon can finally be viewed as much more than a poor relative of carbon in terms of synthetic chemistry. She has shaken up the world by showing that one can truly synthesize precise and controlled silicon-based molecules, and by extension, silicon nanomaterials.”

Congratulations to Julia Kalow, w ho was recently named one of only 4 recipients of the AAAS's 2021 Marion Milligan Mason award ! The biennial award, which grants $55,000 each to four or five early-career female scientists conducting basic research in the chemical sciences, is funded from a $2.2 million bequest to AAAS in Mason’s will to both support women in chemistry and honor her own family’s commitment to women’s education. The award winners are selected through a two-stage review process. Research proposals are subjected to criteria that include the potential of their research to advance knowledge and understanding in their field and beyond and to benefit society.

We’re happy for Julia Kalow and Heather Kulik, recipients of the 2021 Sloan Foundation Fellowships in Chemistry !

MONET Senior Investigator Nicole Steinmetz was named to the Beaker Top 23 Women in Academic Entrepreneurship. These are researchers who have pioneered highly transformative technologies that have translated to the clinic.

MONET Postdoc and foundational member Scott Danielsen has accepted an Assistant Professor positon at Georgia Institute of Technology. He will join the GT School of Materials Science & Engineering in January 2024 where his group will work on the structure and rheology of soft materials, polymers, and biological fluids. Congratulations Scott!

MONET Senior Investigator Nancy Sottos was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences as part of the 2022 elected cohort. Congratulations Nancy!

MONET was a proud major sponsor of the inaugural Polymer Women Empowerment & Research (PoWER) Conference, hosted July 11 & 12 at Northwestern University. Julia Kalow was a co-organizer, Monica Olvera de la Cruz was an invited speaker, EAB Member Emily Pentzer was a workshop leader, trainees Yixin Hu, Jolly Patro, Emmanuel Garcia Villatoro, Christina Hemmingsen, and Alexis Martell Monterroza attended for MONET.

The Schindler and Kulik labs report that matching of the frontier molecular orbital energies of alkenes with those of acyclic oximes enables visible light–mediated aza Paternò–Büchi reactions through triplet energy transfer catalysis. The reaction used to create azetidines is driven by a photocatalyst that excites the molecules from their ground energy state. Using computational models developed by the Kulik lab, we were able to predict compounds that can react with each other to form azetidines using this kind of catalysis. Article Link

A team from the Moore, Craig, and Kulik labs utilize a physical organic model to identify effective force constant and reaction energy as key molecular features that govern mechanochemical kinetics. These results demonstrate a general mechanistic framework for mechanochemical reactions under tensile force and provide a highly accessible tool for large-scale computational screening in the design of mechanophores. Article Link

The Royal Society of Chemistry has elected to award the 2024 Materials Chemistry Horizon Prize to a team of MONET researchers. The prize is awarded to the collaborative team behind the research demonstrating the potential and impact of embedded mechanochemical reactivity on the mechanical limits of cross-linked polymer networks. The prize consists of a professionally produced video showcasing the prize-winning work and its importance, and a trophy. Each collaborator also receives a certificate and individual recognition. RSC Award Page

A team from the Steinmetz and Craig labs developed a novel swell-and-click method that led to successful VLP scaffold formation regardless of the viral load used. VLP-functionalized hydrogels were fabricated with viral concentrations as low as 0.1–1 mg/mL (0.01–0.1 % wt%) without compromising the scaffold stability on the process. The work introduces a novel methodology for the design of VLP-based hydrogels, which could facilitate the scalability of the fabrication process and move a significant step forward towards clinical translation of long-term VLP vaccination in cancer disease. Article Link