PMSE Future Faculty Symposium
The PMSE Future Faculty Symposium features invited oral presentations by honorees who have made significant contributions to their respective fields within polymer materials science and engineering and are applying to academic positions during that year
Submissions are open for the PMSE Future Faculty Symposium from January 1 to February 1. The Google form is available at the link [here]. Please review the nomination guidelines and prepare your information package.
2025 Future Faculty Scholar Class
The twenty members of the 2025 PMSE Future Faculty class are new faculty and industry/government hires across the field of polymer science. A symposium highlighting their work will be held at the Fall 2025 ACS National Meeting, located in Washington, DC. The list below contains affiliations and links to their lab, website, or employer.
| First Name | Last Name | University |
|---|---|---|
| Huang | Banruo | UC Santa Barbara |
| Pedretti | Benjamin | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Kim | Elaine | California Institute of Technology |
| Lyu | Hao | Stanford University |
| Bergman | Harrison | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Song | Jake | Stanford University |
| Zou | Jiahan | University of California, Davis |
| Huang | Jiahao | Case Western Reserve University |
| Zhang | Jianyu | University of Groningen, The Netherlands |
| Shi | Jiuyun | Stanford University |
| Zhao | Junyi | Stanford University |
| Stevens | Kaden | University of Florida |
| Parkatzidis | Kostas | Stanford University |
| Liu | Peng | ETH Zurich |
| Koshani | Roya | Pennsylvania State University |
| Shajari | Shaghayegh | Northwestern University |
| Mane | Shivshankar | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| Bailey | Sophia | Stanford University |
| Pal | Subhajit | University of California, Berkeley |
| Wei | Zitang | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Award Details
Selected awardees will each provide a technical talk describing past research and briefly mention their future research interests. Additionally, they will be invited to participate in a networking reception with one another, keynote speakers, and selected invited guests from academia and other sectors.
Nominations and Selection
Nomination packages should follow package submission guidelines detailed below.
Selection will be made by organizers and ad-hoc members of the selection committee based on information provided in the nomination package, including research innovation and productivity during both PhD and postdoc, demonstrated commitment to an academic career (research, teaching, service), and enthusiasm of mentor nomination letter.
Past Recipients
Nominations and Award Process
Purpose
The goal of this annual symposium is to highlight and provide a forum for postdocs working in polymeric materials that are applying to academic positions during that year (i.e., nominees for the 2023 cycle will be applying for jobs in fall 2023, starting 2024 or later). The future faculty (FF) PMSE symposium is held during the Fall National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (location changes annually). The symposium features oral presentations by honorees who have made significant contributions to their respective fields within polymer materials science and engineering (e.g., synthesis, processing, characterization, physics and engineering of polymeric materials).
Rules of Eligibility
Postdocs working at PhD-granting institutions or national labs will be selected as “PMSE Future Faculty Scholars” and be members of the PMSE Division of the American Chemical Society. It is expected that nominees will apply for faculty positions within 12 months of the award symposium. Individuals from groups historically underrepresented in STEM are highly encouraged to apply.
Nominations
Nominations are open between January 1 and February 1 of each calendar year. The deadline may be extended if needed.
Postdocs will be selected as “PMSE Future Faculty Scholars” following a nomination process. The candidate’s research must align within the themes of the PMSE division. Nominations are to be made by a research mentor (e.g., postdoc or PhD advisor). The nomination package must be uploaded via a Google-based form, which will be provided here closer to opening of the window for nominations.
In addition to contact information for the nominee and nominator, a single PDF containing the following items, in this order, must be uploaded:
- Nomination letter from the mentor (2 page maximum)
- Personal statement from the nominee outlining their research interests and career plans (1 page maximum)
- Nominee’s title and abstract of the tentative presentation for the ACS meeting (~ 300 words)
- Nominee’s curriculum vitae (CV), suitable for a faculty search application (3 page maximum)
Questions regarding the nomination process can be sent to ffsymposium@pmsedivision.org.
Award Selection and Award Nature
Selection of PMSE Future Faculty Scholars will be made by organizers & ad hoc members of the selection committee based on information provided in the nomination package, including research innovation and productivity during both PhD and postdoc, demonstrated commitment to an academic career (research, teaching, service), and enthusiasm of mentor nomination letter.
Selected PMSE Future Faculty Scholars nominees will each provide a technical talk describing past research and briefly mention their future research interests. Additionally, they will be invited to participate in a networking reception with one another, keynote speakers, and selected invited guests from academia and other sectors. The PMSE Young Polymer Scientists and Engineering Committee provides oversight to the coordination of the symposium. Organizers for the 2024 program are Christian Pester (Penn State) and Chris Stafford (NIST).
Invited Future Faculty Scholars are responsible for all costs associated with attending the conference, including travel and registration. Selected scholars must submit their abstracts through the ACS system by the deadline and register for the meeting.
Full List of Future Faculty Scholars
The inaugural symposium was held at the Fall 2018 National ACS Meeting in Boston and featured 22 Future Faculty Scholars, as well as keynote talks delivered by established leaders in the field of polymer science and engineering applying for and starting jobs in academia. Many former honorees are currently independent faculty at academic institutions across the globe. This program is run annually, with nominations due early in the calendar year and the symposium held at the fall national meeting.
Universities represent affiliations at the time of announcement. A full table of all honorees is provided below.
| First Name | Last Name | University | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Huang | Banruo | UC Santa Barbara | 2025 |
| Pedretti | Benjamin | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2025 |
| Kim | Elaine | California Institute of Technology | 2025 |
| Lyu | Hao | Stanford University | 2025 |
| Bergman | Harrison | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2025 |
| Song | Jake | Stanford University | 2025 |
| Zou | Jiahan | University of California, Davis | 2025 |
| Huang | Jiahao | Case Western Reserve University | 2025 |
| Zhang | Jianyu | University of Groningen, The Netherlands | 2025 |
| Shi | Jiuyun | Stanford University | 2025 |
| Zhao | Junyi | Stanford University | 2025 |
| Stevens | Kaden | University of Florida | 2025 |
| Parkatzidis | Kostas | Stanford University | 2025 |
| Liu | Peng | ETH Zurich | 2025 |
| Koshani | Roya | Pennsylvania State University | 2025 |
| Shajari | Shaghayegh | Northwestern University | 2025 |
| Mane | Shivshankar | University of California, Santa Barbara | 2025 |
| Bailey | Sophia | Stanford University | 2025 |
| Pal | Subhajit | University of California, Berkeley | 2025 |
| Wei | Zitang | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2025 |
| Vipul | Agarwal | UNSW Sydney | 2024 |
| Coralie | Backlund | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2024 |
| Mia | Borden | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 2024 |
| Shijie | Cao | University of Chicago | 2024 |
| Christopher | Cooper | Stanford University | 2024 |
| Chris | DelRe | Harvard University | 2024 |
| Neil | Dolinski | University of Chicago | 2024 |
| Gang | Fan | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2024 |
| Paraskevi (Evi) | Flouda | Georgia Institute of Technology | 2024 |
| Jingjing | Gao | Harvard Medical School | 2024 |
| Alexander | Giovannitti | Stanford University | 2024 |
| Kaiwen | Hsiao | Stanford University | 2024 |
| Rachel | Huang | Stanford University | 2024 |
| Sijia | Huang | Lawrence Livermore National Lab | 2024 |
| Bryan | James | Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution | 2024 |
| Dan | Lee | Stanford University | 2024 |
| Junzhe | Lou | Harvard University | 2024 |
| Kaiyuan | Ni | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2024 |
| Joshua | Tropp | Northwestern University | 2024 |
| Spyridon | Varlas | University of Sheffield | 2024 |
| Ricardo Javier | Vázquez | National University of Singapore | 2024 |
| Zhiyao | Zhao | Cornell Univeristy | 2024 |
| Tianyu | Zhu | Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Chicago | 2024 |
| Jill | Alty | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2023 |
| Michael | Burroughs | Stanford University | 2023 |
| Ty | Christoff-Tempesta | University of Delaware | 2023 |
| Julian | Cooper | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 2023 |
| Calum | Ferguson | University of Birmingham and MPIP | 2023 |
| Rachel | Fisher | Columbia University | 2023 |
| Jacob | Gissinger | NASA | 2023 |
| Omar Rifaie | Graham | Imperial College London | 2023 |
| Youhong (Nancy) | Guo | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2023 |
| Thomas | Kolibaba | National Institute of Standards and Technology | 2023 |
| Jacob | Lessard | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 2023 |
| Bin | Liu | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2023 |
| Ting | Ma | Texas A&M University | 2023 |
| EunBi | Oh | Northwestern University | 2023 |
| Monica | Ohnsorg | University of Colorado at Boulder | 2023 |
| Tetsu | Ouchi | Duke University | 2023 |
| Peiyuan | Qu | Harvard University | 2023 |
| Jiale | Shi | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2023 |
| Yifeng | Shi | University of California, Berkeley | 2023 |
| Jing | Tang | Stanford | UC Berkeley | 2023 |
| Anqi | Wang | Imperial College London | 2023 |
| Xiaohui | Xu | Princeton University | 2023 |
| Hanie | Yousefi | Northwestern University | 2023 |
| Beihang | Yu | University of California, Berkeley | 2023 |
| Qi | Zhang | University of Groningen | 2023 |
| W. Ryan | Archer | Princeton University | 2022 |
| Pamela | Cai | University of Chicago | 2022 |
| Chaojian | Chen | Northwestern University | 2022 |
| Ryan | Clarke | National Renewable Energy Lab | 2022 |
| Leiqing | Hu | University at Buffalo | 2022 |
| Kuljeet | Kaur | EPFL | 2022 |
| Seunghyeon | Kim | Max Planck Institute MPIP | 2022 |
| Jianhui | Liu | MIT/Harvard | 2022 |
| Lukas | Michalek | Stanford University | 2022 |
| Matthew | Rivera | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2022 |
| Tracy | Schloemer | Stanford University | 2022 |
| Bharath | Venkatesh | University of California, Santa Barbara | 2022 |
| Kunyu | Wang | University of Pennsylvania | 2022 |
| Shu | Wang | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2022 |
| Zhen | Wang | Max Planck Institute MPIKG | 2022 |
| Peiran | Wei | Texas A&M University | 2022 |
| Kelsie | Wentz | Johns Hopkins University | 2022 |
| Lianqian | Wu | ETH Zurich | 2022 |
| Hao | Yu | University of California, Berkeley | 2022 |
| Catherine | Aitchison | University of Oxford | 2021 |
| Diego | Alzate-Sanchez | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 2021 |
| Hyosung | An | Chonnam National University | 2021 |
| Connor | Bischak | University of Utah | 2021 |
| Navid | Bizmark | Princeton University | 2021 |
| Rachel | Blau | University of California, San Diego | 2021 |
| Wei | Cao | Northwestern University | 2021 |
| Tristan | Clemons | University of Southern Mississippi | 2021 |
| Santiago | Correa | Stanford University | 2021 |
| Scott | Danielsen | Duke University | 2021 |
| Anthony | Engler | Georgia Institute of Technology | 2021 |
| Liang | Feng | Northwestern University | 2021 |
| Yuwei | Gu | Northwestern University | 2021 |
| Aristide | Gumyusenge | Stanford University | 2021 |
| Megan | Hill | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2021 |
| Austin | Jones | Georgia Institute of Technology | 2021 |
| Metin | Karayilan | Duke University | 2021 |
| Kenry | Harvard University | 2021 | |
| Alexa | Kuenstler | University of Colorado | 2021 |
| Boran | Ma | Duke University | 2021 |
| Caitlin | Maikawa | Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School | 2021 |
| Melody | Morris | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2021 |
| William | Neary | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 2021 |
| Amanda | Pearce | University of Birmingham | 2021 |
| Michaela | Pfau | University of Minnesota, Twin Cities | 2021 |
| Lucy Liberman | Solomon | University of Minnesota, Twin Cities | 2021 |
| Indrajit | Srivastava | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 2021 |
| Hao | Sun | University of New Haven | 2021 |
| Chase | Thompson | National Institute of Standards and Technology | 2021 |
| Dylan | Walsh | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2021 |
| Céline | Calvino Carneiro | University of Chicago | 2020 |
| Danielle | Fagnani | University of Michigan | 2020 |
| Samantha | Kristufek | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2020 |
| Chao | Lang | Pennsylvania State University | 2020 |
| Francesca | Lorandi | Carnegie Mellon University | 2020 |
| Rinat | Meir | Columbia University | 2020 |
| Angelika | Neitzel | University of Chicago | 2020 |
| Fatemeh | Ostadhossein | Stanford University | 2020 |
| Nicholas | Pavlopoulos | Technion Israel Institute of Technology | 2020 |
| Hai | Qian | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 2020 |
| Julia | Rho | University of Florida | 2020 |
| Johanna | Schwartz | Lawrence Livermore National Lab | 2020 |
| Peyton | Shieh | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2020 |
| Yilei | Wu | Stanford University | 2020 |
| Yilei | Wu | Stanford University | 2020 |
| Renxuan | Xie | University of California, Santa Barbara | 2020 |
| Benjamin | Yavitt | Stony Brook University | 2020 |
| Symone | Alexander | Georgia Institute of Technology | 2019 |
| Kyle | Bentz | University of California, San Diego | 2019 |
| Graham | Collier | Georgia Institute of Technology | 2019 |
| Heidi | Culver | University of Colorado at Boulder | 2019 |
| Brian | Donovan | University of Colorado at Boulder | 2019 |
| Benjamin | Elling | Northwestern University | 2019 |
| Alan | Enciso | Northwestern University | 2019 |
| C. Adrian | Figg | Northwestern University | 2019 |
| Jeffrey | Foster | University of Birmingham | 2019 |
| Subhadip | Goswami | Northwestern University | 2019 |
| Tomohiro | Kubo | University of Michigan | 2019 |
| Ramya | Kumar | University of Minnesota, Twin Cities | 2019 |
| Yun | Liu | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | 2019 |
| Alexander | Symone | Georgia Institute of Technology | 2019 |
| Aaron | Teator | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 2019 |
| Helen | Tran | Stanford University | 2019 |
| Brooks | Abel | Cornell Univeristy | 2018 |
| Alessia | Battigelli | Brown University | 2018 |
| Sandra | Camarero | University of Groningen | 2018 |
| Evan | Darzi | University of California, Los Angeles | 2018 |
| Marco | Fantin | Carnegie Mellon University | 2018 |
| Matthew | Golder | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2018 |
| Joseph | Grim | University of Colorado at Boulder | 2018 |
| Woojin | Han | Georgia Institute of Technology | 2018 |
| Emily | Hoff | Cornell Univeristy | 2018 |
| Jovan | Kamcev | University of California, Berkeley | 2018 |
| Yoonseob | Kim | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2018 |
| Xuesong | Li | Washington University at St. Louis | 2018 |
| Danielle | Mai | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 2018 |
| Sudheendran | Mavila | University of Colorado at Boulder | 2018 |
| David | Mozhdehi | Duke University | 2018 |
| Liangqi | Ouyang | University of Delaware | 2018 |
| Zhe | Qiang | Northwestern University | 2018 |
| Yunyan | Qiu | Northwestern University | 2018 |
| Seunghyun | Sim | Caltech | 2018 |
| Jeff | Ting | University of Chicago | 2018 |
| Edon | Vitaku | Northwestern University | 2018 |
| Alex | Zhukhovitskiy | University of California, Berkeley | 2018 |
2024 Future Faculty Scholar Class Announcement
2023 Future Faculty Scholar Class Announcement
2022 Future Faculty Scholar Class Announcement
2021 Future Faculty Scholar Class Announcement
2020 Future Faculty Scholar Class Announcement