The purpose of the ACS Global Outstanding Graduate Student and Mentor Award is to disseminate globally the latest knowledge of polymer research and to recognize at the ACS National Meeting not just two winning students, one from the USA and one from anywhere in the world, but also their mentors. Sponsored by Chemical Marketing & Economics, Inc. (CME), the awards, which are co-organized by CME and the Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE) Division of the American Chemical Society, recognize graduate students within one year of graduation or a recent graduate who has completed an outstanding thesis in polymer research accepted by a university during the three-year period prior to January 1 of the award year. PMSE and CME are proud to announce this year’s winners:
ACS Global Outstanding Graduate Student
Dr. Laura Rijns
University of Eindhoven
Dr. Laura Rijns was born in the Netherlands (1996) and obtained her Ph.D. (2023) in Biomedical Engineering “cum laude” from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) with Prof. Patricia Dankers and Prof. E.W. (Bert) Meijer. Supramolecular hydrogels as mimics of the extracellular matrix were developed for cell and organoid culture. She was awarded the Materials-Driven Regeneration Young Talent Award 2021. Currently, Laura is pursuing her postdoc as a Niels Stensen Fellow at Stanford University with Prof. Zhenan Bao, focused on improving the interaction between electronic materials and living tissue.
Prior to graduate school, she received her B.Sc. (2017) and M.Sc. (2019) in Biomedical Engineering at TU/e, in the lab of Prof. E.W. (Bert) Meijer. During her undergraduate studies, she was the Lab Captain of the iGEM TU/e 2016 team. In 2017, she worked at UC Santa Barbara in the group of Prof. Songi Han, studying liquid-liquid phase separated coacervate polymers. In 2019 and 2023, she worked at EPFL (Switzerland) with Prof. Maartje Bastings, studying multivalent interactions using DNA origami.
ACS Global Outstanding Mentor
Professor Patricia Dankers
University of Eindhoven
Patricia Dankers is Professor in Biomedical Materials & Chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). She studied chemistry in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Her Ph.D. studies were performed at TU/e in the group of Prof. E.W. (Bert) Meijer, on supramolecular biomaterials (2006). She worked for SupraPolix, and the University Medical Center, Groningen. Her second Ph.D. thesis work was performed in medical sciences on kidney regenerative medicine, in Groningen (2013). She worked at Northwestern University, Chicago, USA (2010). She climbed every step on the academic ladder, starting in 2008, ending in 2017 as full Professor. She received Veni, Vidi & Vici (2008, 2017, 2023) and ERC starting & ERC PoC (2012, 2017) grants. She has been awarded the KNCV Gold Medal (2020) and the Ammodo Award for Fundamental Science (2021). She is a co-founder of the spin-off companies UPyTher (2020) and VivArt-X (2022). She is one of the founders of the Research Center for Interactive Polymer Materials (IPM) in Eindhoven, funded by a Gravitation Grant (2022).
ACS Global Outstanding Graduate Student
Dr. Pamela Cai
Stanford University
Pamela Cai received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from MIT in 2016. She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 2023 under the mentorship of Prof. Andrew Spakowitz and Prof. Sarah Heilshorn. Her work included development of a polymer physics theory connecting molecular design of dynamically associating polymers to its bulk rheological behavior, refinement of a microrheology technique, and synthesis of a biopolymer-based material that has applications in drug delivery, 3D bioprinting, and recyclable plastics. In 2019, she was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Fellowship. More recently, she received the Frank J. Padden Jr. Award for graduate excellence in polymer physics research by the American Physical Society Division of Polymer Physics.
ACS Global Outstanding Mentor
Professor Andrew Spakowitz
Stanford University
Andrew Spakowitz received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1999, and he defended his Ph.D. thesis in Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology in 2004. He was a postdoctoral scholar in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley from 2004 to 2006. Andrew Spakowitz joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford as an Assistant Professor in August 2006. He was promoted to Associate Professor in April 2014 and full Professor of Chemical Engineering and of Materials Science and Engineering in 2020. Professor Spakowitz currently serves as the Tang Family Foundation Chair of Chemical Engineering.
The Spakowitz lab is engaged in projects that address fundamental chemical and physical phenomena underlying a range of biological processes and soft-material applications. Current research in the lab focuses on four main research themes: chromosomal organization and dynamics, protein self-assembly, polymer membranes, and charge transport in conducting polymers. These broad research areas offer complementary perspectives on chemical and physical processes, and they leverage this complementarity throughout their research. Their approach draws from a diverse range of theoretical and computational methods, including analytical theory of semiflexible polymers, polymer field theory, continuum elastic mechanics, Brownian dynamics simulation, equilibrium and dynamic Monte Carlo simulations, analytical theory and numerical simulations of reaction-diffusion phenomena, and machine-learning and data-science approaches. A common thread in their work is the need to capture phenomena over many length and time scales, and flexibility in research methodologies provides them with the critical tools to address these complex multidisciplinary problems.