Project Descriptions for the 2025 REU Program

Faculty mentor: Prof. April Kloxin
Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering ● 🔗 Research Group Site
Postdoc & grad student mentors: Dr. Louisa Palmese & Claire Lois

Processing in combination with molecularly engineered building blocks provides opportunities for controlling material structure and properties on the micro to macro scale and achieving desired material functions. For example, well-defined polymer and peptide building blocks in conjunction with microfluidic flow-focusing can be used to create microgels (i.e., hydrogel microparticles) with low dispersity and of specific sizes and functionalities for a range of applications, including encapsulation and delivery of live cells. This project will explore the use of flow-focusing microfluidics and batch emulsion techniques for creating such hybrid, active, and responsive materials systems at scale, including for applications in the production and delivery of therapeutic proteins. In addition to different emulsion approaches, other processing techniques such as vacuum and freeze drying will be explored, and different types of building blocks evaluated. A student working on this project will gain hands-on experience in microfluidic and batch emulsion techniques, experiment design and execution for optimizing material properties with different building block and processing approaches, and materials characterization toward a range of applications.

Faculty mentor: Prof. April Kloxin
Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering ● 🔗 Research Group Site
Postdoc & grad student mentors: Caitlin D’Ambrosio & Rafael Castro

Nature-inspired building blocks open new possibilities for creating active, responsive materials with properties designed from the bottom up. The complex architecture of many hierarchical nanostructures found in nature has been challenging to replicate synthetically. To address this, we have combined molecular engineering with biosynthetic techniques to develop coiled-coil peptides, known as bundlemers, which can be linked using click chemistry and enzymatic reactions to form precisely ordered protein nanostructures with diverse functionalities. By incorporating unnatural amino acids, we utilize click chemistry to attach pH-responsive peptides that drive the assembly of rod-like bottlebrush structures. This project explores the tunability of assemblies formed by pH-responsive peptides, focusing on the synthesis and characterization of peptide-based building blocks and materials to create stimuli-responsive nanostructures. These materials have potential applications in lubrication, separation technologies, and human health. Students involved in this project will gain experience in peptide synthesis and characterization, with opportunities to work at the intersection of scalable microwave-assisted peptide synthesis and biosynthetic methods.

Faculty mentor: Prof. April Kloxin
Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering ● 🔗 Research Group Site
Postdoc & grad student mentors: Ana Maria Mosquera Rodriguez

Proteins and polypeptides inspired by nature and integrating non-natural reactive handles provide opportunities for the creation of hybrid, active, and responsive biomaterials. For example, variants of resilin like polypeptides (RLPs) with selected amino acid substitutions and fused to other nature-inspired building blocks of interest (e.g., computationally-designed coiled coils) can be used to create materials with desired structural and mechanical properties and that transition between different physical states in response to environmental cues. The student working on this project will build from these concepts and learn and practice the principles of protein engineering, biosynthesis, and biomaterials fabrication and characterization to make nature-inspired hybrid, active, and responsive biomaterials.

Faculty mentor: Prof. Darrin Pochan
Materials Science & Engineering ● 🔗 Research Group Site
Graduate student mentors: James Brennan

Bundlemers are peptide nanoparticles made from solution-assembly of computationally designed peptide molecules. Specifically, the particles are coiled coils-an assembly of four alpha helical peptides that forms a 2nm x 4 nm cylinder that displays desired chemical functionality from their surface. We use the surfaces of the particles to design assembling nanoparticle systems to form desired nanostructures and nanomaterials. The project will include experiences in peptide synthetic chemistry in order to synthesize designed bundlemer peptides as well as molecular characterization such as mass spectroscopy and circular dichroism to observe individual molecules and solution assembled bundlemer particles. Additionally, solution assembly will be used to make nanomaterial assemblies from complementary bundlemer particles (e.g., positively charged and negatively charged bundlemers mixed together for complexation in solution). Furthermore, candidate assembies will be covalently crosslinked into permanent, porous films for potential membrane applciations. Nanomaterials and films will be studied using microscopy and mechanical testing (e.g., tensile testing and dynamic mechanical analysis). Overall, the research aims to make advanced materials with amino-acid-based building blocks with potential for environmental compatibility.

Faculty mentor: Prof. LaShanda Korley
Materials Science & Engineering, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering ● 🔗 Research Group Site
Graduate student mentors: Catherine Lewis

Nature constructs materials with a wide range of advanced functions and performance by using dynamic building blocks, which utilize noncovalent chemistries to achieve hierarchical structures. Traditionally, synthetic polymers lack the organization and functionality of natural materials limiting their applications as smart or multifunctional materials. To overcome limitations of synthetic polymers, a promising class of bio-inspired materials are polymer-peptide hybrids, which utilize peptide motifs to achieve tunable hierarchical assembly, long-range order, and enhanced mechanical properties. Segmented polyureas contain crystalline hard phases and amorphous soft segments similar to natural materials making them favorable framework for bio-inspired polymer-peptide hybrids. Hierarchical assembly and mechanical properties of these peptide-polyurea (PPU) hybrids can be modulated through altering structure components, such as peptide choice, peptide repeat length, peptide content, synthetic block hydrophilicity, and chain extension. This research project aims to evaluate pH responsiveness of the PPU hybrids through deprotection of the peptide residue and evaluate alternative processing methods for these PPU hybrids to produce fibrous PPU mats via electrospinning. Herein, we will first deprotect the PPU hybrids to analyze pH responsiveness and then evaluate the deprotected PPU hybrid as a pH responsive fibrous mat. The student working on this project will learn an array of polymer synthesis and chemical functional strategies, polymer processing approaches, and characterization techniques.

Faculty mentor: Prof. Xinqiao Jia
Materials Science & Engineering, Biomedical Engineering ● 🔗 Research Group Site
Graduate student mentor: Samiksha Udan

Peptides capable of forming homotetrameric coiled-coil bundles will be utilized as the monomeric building blocks (“bundlemers”, BNL) to synthesize protein-like hybrid polymers consisting of covalently linked coiled-coil microdomains with regularly spaced elastin-like peptides (ELP) repeats via step-growth polymerization employing the highly efficient, bioorthogonal tetrazine (Tz) ligation with trans-cyclooctene (TCO). The composition of the ELP and the BNL segments and the polymerization condition will be adjusted to produce a copolymer (ELP-BNL)n that exhibits temperature-induced transition from a rigid rod to a flexible chain through coordinated coacervation of the ELP segments. To demonstrate stimuli-induced molecular actuation, a scrambled BNL peptide (sBNL) unable to assemble into a coiled-coil will be equipped with tetrazine and coumarin (CM) groups at the N- and C-termini, respectively. Inclusion of Tz-sBNL-CM in the polymerization media will afford a CM-functionalized telechelic polymer that can be immobilized on a CM-functionalized substrate at the chain ends through UV light-induced dimerization of CM. Molecular actuation will be achieved through temperature oscillation in combination with light-induced bond formation (< 260 nm) and bond cleavage (> 300 nm). The fluorescence bead will be conjugated to the polymer backbone to enable the characterization of molecular motion through particle tracking microrheology.

Faculty mentor: Prof. Joshua Zide
Materials Science & Engineering ● 🔗 Research Group Page
Graduate student mentor: Angel Gordon

III-V materials grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) are promising for photoconductive switches, which can be targeted as terahertz sources or detectors. This project, in close collaboration with Ph.D. student Angel Gordon, focuses on the characterization of these materials (and devices made from them) to understand the properties needed for terahertz applications. Some specific techniques include Hall effect measurements for electrical characterization and high-resolution x-ray diffraction (HR-XRD) to determine epitaxial film quality. Additionally, device fabrication by wire bonding photoconductive switches to printed circuit boards and device characterization by measuring resistivity. The student will also have some experience with MBE, a technique that allows the growth of high-quality single-crystal semiconductors with exquisite control, including the ultrahigh vacuum technology that enables it and the mechanisms to control material composition and morphology.

Faculty mentor: Prof. Lars Gundlach
Chemistry & Biochemistry, Physics & Astronomy ● 🔗 Research Group Page
Graduate student mentor: TBD

Understanding the interaction between novel hybrid materials and THz radiation on time-scales as short as picoseconds is important for designing new and improving existing THz materials and devices. In this project the techniques and instrumentation necessary for measuring ultrafast THz response are applied, improved and developed. One focus of this project lies on implementing polarization-, temperature- and magnetic field-control in visible pump – THz probe spectroscopy. Students will work closely with the PhD student overseeing the project. They will be introduced to working with advanced ultrafast optical instrumentation and how to modify it for specific measurements. Students will learn how to conduct ultrafast time-resolved spectroscopic measurements, analyze the acquired data, and interpret the results.

Faculty mentor: Prof. Xi Wang
Materials Science & Engineering ● 🔗 Faculty Page
Graduate student mentor: Ke Ma

TBD

Faculty mentor: Prof. Chitraleema Chakraborty
Material Science & Engineering, Physics & Astronomy ● 🔗 Faculty Page
Graduate student mentor: Muhammad Hassan Shaikh

TBD

Faculty mentor: Prof. Christian Pester
Materials Science & Engineering ● 🔗 Research Group Page
Graduate student mentor: Brock Hunter

Bacteria present a constant threat to human health, and research into new antibacterial materials is key to meeting challenges in health care and waste treatment. Our group is developing photoactive polymer coatings which can use air to destroy bacteria in drinking water. This project focuses on extending the capabilities and efficiencies of these coatings to harvest green, red, and infrared light, leading to implementation into water purification flow systems. Students will utilize a wide suite of techniques including organic photocatalyst synthesis, controlled polymer growth, tensiometry, gel permeation chromatography, ellipsometry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, NMR, UV-Visible spectroscopy, kinetics testing, and flow system design. Working at the interface of materials design, engineering, and chemistry, well defined engineering goals will drive students to develop their chemistry knowledge and research intuition to solve the challenges of this project. Students will work with senior researchers of varied backgrounds but similar goals to challenge each other and transform students into excited, discerning leaders of their future fields.

Faculty mentor: Prof. Yafei Ren
Physics & Astronomy ● 🔗 Faculty Page
Graduate student mentor: Saurabh Lamsal

A magnon is a quantum of spin wave that represents collective oscillation of local magnetic moment in magnetic materials. Magnons can couple to a diverse array of quantum excitations, including microwave and optical photons (light quanta), phonons (lattice-vibration quanta), and solid-state qubits. Positioning at the intersection of these quantum excitations, magnons are crucial for developing hybrid quantum systems and advancing towards a “quantum internet”, integrating the advantages of different quantum platforms. Understanding nonlinear dynamics of magnons coupled to the quantum excitations are crucal for those applications. This project will explore the nonlinear magnon dynamics in van der Waals magnets driven out of equlibrium by light in cavity for magnonic functionalities. We will study novel nonequilibrium phases of matter, bistability and even chaos in vdW magnets, which are crucial for quantum functionalities.

Faculty mentor: Prof. Ryan Comes
Materials Science & Engineering Department ● 🔗 Research Group Page
Graduate student mentor: Tanzila Tasnim

Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is commonly used to make ultra-high quality nanoscale materials for electronic, optical, and quantum systems. Reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) is commonly used to study how nanoscale films are growing in MBE. We are working on development of machine learning codes to extract more information from RHEED data during synthesis to enable autonomous and AI-driven synthesis of these materials in the future. The REU student will work on developing machine learning codes to interpret RHEED videos and connect them to other data about the films that are grown in our lab. Students from materials science, physics, electrical engineering or computer science who have knowledge of Python coding and a bit of understanding of crystal structures are ideal for this project, where they will learn how to tie materials synthesis and characterization to new machine learning algorithms.

Faculty mentor: Profs. Emil Hernández-Pagán, Matt Doty, & Christian Pester
Chemistry & Biochemistry (EHP), Materials Science & Engineering Department (MD & CP)
🔗 Hernández-Pagán Group Page
🔗 Doty Group Page
🔗 Pester Group Page
Graduate student mentor: Hannah Lacey

Photon upconversion systems that can efficiently harvest photons of low-energy and convert them to higher energy ones are of great interest for applications including solar energy harvesting, photocatalysis, and night vision. This project focuses on the synthesis and characterization of the inorganic and polymeric components required to build photon upconverting hybrid materials. In these hybrid materials, tailored polymer brushes are grown on semiconductor nanocrystals with defined size, shape and composition. The interdisciplinary nature of the project will allow for the students to gain experience in a range of techniques including nanocrystals/polymer synthesis, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, NMR, UV-Visible spectroscopy, steady-state and time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy, and spectroscopic ellipsometry. It will also enable students to work/communicate with and learn from researchers with different backgrounds and expertise which will contribute to their professional development.