Divya Iyer
University of California, Los Angeles
The PMSE Division is pleased to announce that Divya Iyer is the winner of the 2023 Eastman Chemical Student Award in Applied Polymer Science. This award, sponsored by Eastman Chemical Company and administered by the PMSE Division, is given for the best paper presented at the Eastman Chemical Student Award Symposium as part of the PMSE program. The Eastman Chemical Student Award Symposium was held at the Fall 2023 National ACS Meeting in San Francisco.
Divya Iyer is a Ph.D. candidate in Prof. Samanvaya Srivastava’s group in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research is focused on enabling the circularity of post-consumer-use polyurethane foam by implementing an inexpensive sorting technique, followed by depolymerization and upcycling into high-strength materials. Prior to starting her Ph.D. at UCLA, Divya graduated from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India with a B.Tech. degree in Polymer Engineering & Technology.
The other finalists who presented at the Award Symposium were William Archer (Virginia Polytechnic Institute), Ciera Cipriani (Texas A & M University), Vidhika Damani (University of Delaware), Takuto Toriumi (University of Tsukuba), and Xiaoqian Wang (Virginia Polytechnic Institute).