VPPS 2023 Career Panel

Arthi Jayaraman is currently Centennial Term Professor for Excellence in Research and Education in the Departments of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Delaware (UD), Newark. She is currently the director for an NSF-funded NRT graduate traineeship program on ‘Computing and Data Science Training for Materials Innovation, Discovery, and Analytics’. She also serves as editor for both American Chemical Society (ACS) journals Macromolecules and ACS Polymers Au (gold). Jayaraman received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University and conducted her postdoctoral research in Materials Science and Engineering at University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. After holding the position of Patten Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder, in 2014 she joined the faculty at UD. Jayaraman’s research expertise is in development of molecular modeling, theory and simulation techniques and application of these techniques to study polymer nanocomposites, blends, and solutions, and biomaterials. She has received the following honors: AIChE COMSEF Impact Award (2021), American Physical Society (APS) Fellowship (2020), Dudley Saville Lectureship at Princeton University (2016), ACS PMSE Young Investigator (2014),  AIChE COMSEF division Young Investigator Award (2013), CU Provost Faculty Achievement Award (2013), Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Research Award (2010), CU Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering’s outstanding undergraduate teaching award (2011) and graduate teaching award (2014) and UD College of Engineering Faculty Excellence in Teaching (2023).

Dr. R. Kōnane Bay (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. She received her B.S. in Materials Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Polymer Science & Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she studied the mechanics of ultrathin polymer films working with Alfred J. Crosby. For her graduate work, she has been selected for many honors and awards, including the Eastman Chemical Award in Applied Polymer Science, a finalist for the Frank J. Padden Jr. Award from the American Physical Society Division of Polymer Physics, and the Best Poster Award at the Adhesion Society. She did her postdoctoral training as Princeton Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University working with Sujit S. Datta on the bacteria growth and motility in complex environments. During her postdoc, she was selected as an MIT Impact Fellow and an MIT Rising Star in Chemical Engineering. Now, her lab, Huli Materials Lab, focuses on understanding and leveraging biological systems to develop synthetic and living polymeric materials for biotechnology, sensing, and protection. Throughout her academic career, she has been actively involved in the polymer physics community from organizing the first Virtual Polymer Physics Symposium to being one of the chairs of the 2022 Polymer Physics Gordon Research Seminar.

Dr. Rohini Gupta is an Innovation Manager for CARA – California Research Alliance by BASF, with subject matter expertise in the interdisciplinary field of advanced functional materials, soft matter, colloids & interfaces, and wetting & adhesion. She graduated with honors in Chemical Engineering from Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur in 2007. After receiving her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in 2013, she pursued her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and worked briefly at the Dow Chemical Company. Before becoming the Innovation Manager in 2022, she worked in the fast-paced semiconductor industry for 6 years, first as Process Technology Development Engineer for Intel Corporation and then as Scientist for BASF Corporation’s Center for Excellence, Semiconductor Applications. She has received numerous awards for her outstanding technical contributions and has a prolific publication record in reputed international journals.

Jelena Dinic received her PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her dissertation research primarily focused on studying the extensional rheology response of polymer solutions. The objective was to elucidate how macromolecular stretching influences extensional viscosity and polymer relaxation dynamics, and consequently, how it determines processability for printing, coating, dispensing, and spraying applications. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Tirrell group at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago. Her research interests broadly encompass understanding and investigating the interactions and dynamics of neutral and charged biomacromolecules.

Dr. Jeff Ting (he/him) received his BS in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas. Jeff received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2016, working with Frank Bates and Theresa Reineke on synthesizing tunable polymers for oral drug delivery. During his doctoral studies, he was a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the AIChE Pharmaceutical Discovery, Development and Manufacturing Student Award, and the University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. These distinctions recognized his contributions to outlining macromolecular design strategies that can solubilize highly hydrophobic, small-molecule active pharmaceutical ingredients. Afterward, Jeff worked as a NIST-CHiMaD Postdoctoral Fellow with Matt Tirrell as part of the Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD), supported by NIST and the Materials Genome Initiative. His work focused on understanding the fundamental static and dynamic properties of polyelectrolyte complex assemblies via X-ray and neutron scattering, microscopy, and rheology. In 2020, Jeff joined 3M as a Senior Polymer Scientist as part of the Materials Informatics (MI) Group in the Corporate Research Materials Laboratory. He was a lead experimentalist in launching a broad effort to strategically apply MI tools and data-driven methodologies for industrial materials research and product development workflows. During this time, he was recognized as one of twelve individuals for the 2021 Young Observers Program by the U.S. National Committee of IUPAC, which aims to build collaborations among internationally acclaimed scientists and engineers across academia, industry, and government. In 2022 Jeff became a Senior Scientist and the first employee at a venture-backed stealth biotech startup, Nanite, in Boston, MA. Some of his technical and non-technical roles involve setting up chemical synthesis capabilities at an incubator lab, directing projects at the interface of polymer science/advanced drug delivery/machine learning, providing input to build a highly collaborative and diverse team, establishing best practices for lab-wide protocols and data management, grant writing, engagement with the scientific community, and presenting to external stakeholders as the company grows. For future contact, reach out to Jeff on Twitter (@J_Ting1) or LinkedIn (jting1).

Marc Charendoff, Ph.D. is as a senior staff engineer for Kraton Corporation specializing in polymer scale-up and simulation techniques across multiple time and length scales. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Houston. His current interests include both polymerization kinetics modeling and structure-function simulations of block copolymers along with their applications in multiple market spaces. His experience spans the nuclear and chemical engineering fields along with excursions into simulation-based pharmacophore development.