Whitney Blocher McTigue works to utilize polyelectrolyte complexes for a variety of different applications and real-world problems, particularly in the field of biomedicine. She received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Chemical Engineering and completed her postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Chaeyoung is working toward understanding how architecture influences complex coacervates, particularly how dismantling the polymer(s) used affects phase separation. Her work will help set the foundation for applications such as dual drug delivery and degradable bandages.

Kimia is investigating how different nucleic acids interact with polyelectrolytes to determine if and how complex coacervation can thermally stabilize these nucleic acids for biomedical applications. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimiasadat-mirlohi/

Maggie is studying to obtain a degree in biology. Her research focuses on investigating the phase space of heteroprotein coacervates. Instead of utilizing synthetic polymers or peptides, she uses only proteins to make polyelectrolyte complexes. Her work will chart out the formulation space where we see complexation or a single phase, and whether the complexes formed are coacervates or precipitates.

Alli is a chemical engineering sophomore who will be working on airbrushing complex coacervates for use as a pH indicator for applicaitons such as wound healing.

Matt is a chemical and biomoelcular engineering undergraduate who will be working with peptoids, a variation of peptides where the hydrogen from the amine and the R group are switched. He will investigate how the lack of chirality plays a role in complex coacervation and compare analog peptiod systems with peptide systems, as well as explore peptide/peptoid complexes.

Sydney is part of the IDEAS program concentrating in chemical engineering and political science. She is currently working with a model coacervate system to generate phase diagrams utilizing small sample volumes. Her work will allow us to describe the phase behavior of systems where large sample volumes are difficult to make, allowing us to investigate how binodal curves and salt resistance shift as various system parameters such as chain length and composition are changed.