Deconstructing Macromolecules to Make Better Materials

Computer artwork of carbon nanotube in royal blue with spheres and tubes

Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

Location: Gateway South 024

Speaker: Jeremiah A. Johnson, A. Thomas Geurtin Professor of Chemistry and Associate Head of the Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

ABSTRACT

Polymers are arguably the most important materials on Earth. Despite a century of study, however, much remains unknown about how the molecular-scale features of polymers translate to their bulk properties, preventing the predictive design of next-generation materials with enhanced functions and circularity. This talk will highlight our efforts to leverage efficient synthetic methods and strategies to construct and deconstruct polymers, thereby unveiling previously hidden features of macromolecular structure and enabling new polymeric material functions. Experimental tools for measuring previously hidden topological features of cross-linked polymer networks will be described.1 Inspired by these results, new and simple strategies for enhancing the toughenss2 and circularity3,4,5 of polymer networks will be introduced.

[1] M. Zhong et al., Science 2016, 353, 1264–1268.
[2] S. Wang et al., Science 2023, 380, 1248–1252.
[3] P. Shieh et al., Nature 2020, 583, 542–547.
[4] G. Kiel et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144, 12979–12988.
[5] K. Ko et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2024, 146, 9142–9154.

BIOGRAPHY

Portrait of Jeremiah A. Johnson

Prof. Johnson is the A. Thomas Geurtin Professor of Chemistry and Associate Head of the Department of Chemistry at MIT. He conducted undergraduate research with Prof. Karen L. Wooley at Washington University in St. Louis, receiving a B.S. in biomedical engineering with a second major in chemistry. He received a PhD in chemistry from Columbia University working with Prof. Nicholas J. Turro and Prof. Jeffrey T. Koberstein. In 2011, following a Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology with Professors David A. Tirrell and Robert H. Grubbs, he began his independent career as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at MIT. He is currently a member of the MIT Program for Polymers and Soft Matter (PPSM), the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard. He is a Co-Founder of Window Therapeutics Inc. and Elementium Innovations Inc., both of which are based on technologies (co)developed in his laboratory at MIT. Prof. Johnson received a 2019 ACS Cope Scholar Award, the 2018 Macromolecules-Biomacromolecules Young Investigator Award, the 2018 Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education, a Sloan Research Fellowship, the Air Force Young Investigator Award, the Thieme Journal Award for Young Faculty, the DuPont Young Professor Award, the 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award, and an NSF CAREER award. In 2019 and 2023 he was named a Finalist for the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists. In 2020 and 2023, bottlebrush prodrugs from his laboratory were awarded the Assay Cascade Award from the Nanoparticle Characterization Laboratory of the National Cancer Institute. He was awarded the 2018 MIT School of Science Undergraduate Teaching Prize. The Johnson Group invents methods and strategies for the synthesis of functional (macro)molecules that address fundamental scientific questions and contribute solutions to global challenges including renewable energy storage, chemical sustainability, and human health.