Professor Jessica Lamb

Jessica was born in Madison, WI, before growing up in Fargo, ND, and spending significant time around lakes in Minnesota during the summer. She then moved farther north to Grand Forks, ND, where she attended the University of North Dakota. While there, she played in multiple bands, worked as a stagehand at the local theatre, and founded the swing dancing club. She performed undergraduate research on organometallic chemistry in the lab of Professor Irina Smoliakova. During the summers, she studied abroad in Spain, taught at a local performing arts school, and worked in the lab of Professor Victoria Johnston-Gelling in the Coatings and Polymeric Materials Department of North Dakota State University. 

After graduating with her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry summa cum laude in 2012, Jessica moved to Ithaca, NY for graduate school at Cornell University. When she wasn't competitive ballroom dancing, she was conducting research on small molecule catalysis with Professor Geoffrey Coates as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She graduated with her doctorate in 2017, before studying polymers and photochemistry in Professor Jeremiah Johnson's group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, as an National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow. She started at the University of Minnesota as an Assistant Professor in the summer of 2020. She is excited to be back in lake country, where she enjoys spending time with family, friends, and her cat, Marvel. 

Honors and Awards

3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, 2022
Finalist for the Hanwha Total-IUPAC Young Polymer Scientist Award, 2022
ACS Division of Professional Relations (PROF) Leadership Development Award, 2021
NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2018–2020
Philanthropic Education Organization Scholars Award, 2016
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, 2013–2017