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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. Please use the Google Forms link here to apply, and review the nomination guidelines.

2023 Future Faculty Scholar Class

The twenty five members of the 2023 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 2023 Fall ACS National Meeting, located in San Francisco, California. The list below contains affiliations and links to their lab, website, or employer.

Please see their photos at the PMSE blog post.

  • Vipul Agarwal, UNSW Sydney
  • Michael Burroughs, Stanford University
  • Ty Christoff-Tempesta, University of Delaware
  • Julian Cooper, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • Calum Ferguson, University of Birmingham and MPIP
  • Rachel Fisher, Columbia University
  • Jacob Gissinger, NASA
  • Youhong (Nancy) Guo, MIT
  • Thomas Kolibaba, NIST
  • Jacob Lessard, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • Bin Liu, MIT
  • Ting Ma, Texas A&M University
  • EunBi Oh, Northwestern
  • Monica Ohnsorg, University of Colorado at Boulder
  • Tetsu Ouchi, Duke University
  • Peiyuan Qu, Harvard University
  • Omar Rifaie Graham, Imperial College London
  • Jiale Shi, MIT
  • Yifeng Shi, University of California at Berkeley
  • Jing Tang, Ph.D., Stanford | UC Berkeley
  • Anqi Wang, Imperial College
  • Xiaohui Xu, Princeton University
  • Hanie Yousefi, Northwestern University
  • Beihang Yu, Berkeley Lab
  • Qi Zhang, University of Groningen

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”. Individuals from groups historically underrepresented in STEM are highly encouraged to apply. It is expected that nominees will apply for faculty positions within 12 months of the award symposium.

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:

  1. Nomination letter from the mentor (2 page maximum)
  2. Personal statement from the nominee outlining their research interests and career plans (1 page maximum)
  3. Nominee’s title and abstract of the tentative presentation for the ACS meeting (~ 300 words)
  4. 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 the conference

2022 Future Faculty Class

  • Coralie Backlund, MIT
  • Mia Borden, University of North Carolina
  • Shijie Cao, University of Chicago
  • Christopher Cooper, Stanford University
  • Chris DelRe, Harvard University
  • Neil Dolinski, University of Chicago
  • Gang Fan, MIT
  • Paraskevi (Evi) Flouda, Georgia Tech University
  • Jingjing Gao, Harvard Medical School
  • Alexander Giovannitti, Stanford U.
  • Kaiwen Hsiao, Stanford University
  • Rachel Huang, Stanford University
  • Sijia Huang, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
  • Bryan James, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
  • Dan Lee, Stanford U.
  • Junzhe Lou, Harvard U.
  • Kaiyuan Ni, MIT
  • Joshua Tropp, Northwestern University
  • Spyridon Varlas, University of Sheffield
  • Ricardo Javier Vázquez, National University of Singapore
  • Zhiyao Zhao, Cornell Univeristy
  • Tianyu Zhu, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Chicago

Fall 2021 (Held San Diego 2022)

Organizers
 AJ Boydston (University of Wisconsin)
Will Gutekunst (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Megan Robertson (University of Houston)

PMSE Future Faculty Symposium Guest Speakers
Rachel Segalman (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Theresa Reineke (University of Minnesota)

PMSE Future Faculty Scholars

  • Catherine Aitchison (University of Oxford)
  • Diego Alzate-Sanchez (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
  • Hyosung An (Chonnam National University)
  • Connor Bischak (University of Utah)
  • Navid Bizmark (Princeton University)
  • Rachel Blau (University of California, San Diego)
  • Wei Cao (Northwestern University)
  • Tristan Clemons (University of Southern Mississippi)
  • Santiago Correa (Stanford University)
  • Scott Danielsen (Duke University)
  • Anthony Engler (Georgia Institute of Technology)
  • Liang Feng (Northwestern University)
  • Yuwei Gu (Northwestern University)
  • Aristide Gumyusenge (Stanford University)
  • Megan Hill (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  • Austin Jones (Georgia Institute of Technology)
  • Metin Karayilan (Duke University)
  • Kenry (Harvard University)
  • Alexa Kuenstler (University of Colorado)
  • Lucy Liberman Solomon (University of Minnesota)
  • Boran Ma (Duke University)
  • Caitlin Maikawa (Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School)
  • Melody Morris (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  • William Neary (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
  • Amanda Pearce (University of Birmingham)
  • Michaela Pfau (University of Minnesota)
  • Indrajit Srivastava (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
  • Hao Sun (University of New Haven)
  • Chase Thompson (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
  • Dylan Walsh (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Fall 2020 (San Francisco / Virtual)

Organizers
Davita Watkins (University of Mississippi)
AJ Boydston (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

PMSE Future Faculty Symposium Guest Speakers

  • Alshakim Nelson (University of Washington)
  • Ramesh Jasti (University of Oregon)

PMSE Future Faculty Scholars

  • Céline Calvino Carneiro (University of Chicago)
  • Danielle Fagnani (University of Michigan)
  • Samantha Kristufek (MIT),  Yilei Wu (Stanford)
  • Chao Lang (Penn State)
  • Francesca Lorandi (Carnegie Mellon)
  • Rinat Meir (Columbia)
  • Angelika Neitzel (University of Chicago)
  • Fatemeh Ostadhossein (Stanford)
  • Nicholas Pavlopoulos (Technion Israel Institute of Technology)
  • Hai Qian (University of Illinois, UC)
  • Julia Rho (University of Florida)
  • Johanna Schwartz (Lawrence Livermore National Lab)
  • Peyton Shieh (MIT)
  • Yilei Wu (Stanford)
  • Renxuan Xie (University of California, Santa Barbara)
  • Benjamin Yavitt (Stony Brook University)

Fall 2019 (San Diego)

Organizers
Emily Pentzer (Texas A&M University)
Cole DeForest (University of Washington)

PMSE Future Faculty Symposium Keynote Speakers

  • Sanat Kumar (Columbia University)
  • LaShanda Korley (University of Delaware)

PMSE Future Faculty Scholars

  • Symone Alexander (Georgia Tech)
  • Kyle Bentz (University of California, San Diego)
  • Graham Collier (Georgia Tech)
  • Heidi Culver (University of Colorado at Boulder)
  • Brian Donovan (University of Colorado at Boulder)
  • Benjamin Elling (Northwestern University)
  • Alan Enciso (Northwestern University)
  • C. Adrian Figg (Northwestern University)
  • Jeffrey Foster (University of Birmingham)
  • Subhadip Goswami (Northwestern University)
  • Tomohiro Kubo (University of Michigan)
  • Ramya Kumar (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
  • Yun Liu (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
  • Alexander Symone (Georgia Tech)
  • Aaron Teator (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
  • Helen Tran (Stanford University)

Fall 2018 (Boston)

Organizers

Luis Campos (Columbia)
Melissa Grunlan (Texas A&M)
Julie Jessop (Mississippi State)

PMSE Future Faculty Symposium Keynote Speakers

  • Craig Hawker (UCSC)
  • Paula Hammond (MIT)
  • Stuart Rowan (U Chicago)
  • Karen Wooley (Texas A&M)

PMSE Future Faculty Scholars

  • Brooks Abel (Cornell)
  • ​Alessia Battigelli (Brown)
  • Sandra Camarero (Groningen)
  • Evan Darzi (UCLA)
  • Marco Fantin (Carnegie Mellon)
  • Matthew Golder (MIT)
  • Joseph Grim (CU Boulder)
  • Woojin Han (Georgia Tech)
  • Emily Hoff (Cornell)
  • Jovan Kamcev (UC Berkeley)
  • Yoonseob Kim (MIT)
  • Xuesong Li (Wash U St Louis)
  • Danielle Mai (MIT)
  • Sudheendran Mavila (CU Boulder)
  • David Mozhdehi (Duke)
  • Liangqi Ouyang (University of Delaware)
  • Zhe Qiang (Northwestern)
  • Yunyan Qiu (Northwestern)
  • Seunghyun Sim (Caltech)
  • Jeff Ting (University of Chicago)
  • Edon Vitaku (Northwestern)
  • Alex Zhukhovitskiy (UC Berkeley)