New Frontiers in Supramolecular Design of Materials

Title:

New Frontiers in Supramolecular Design of Materials

Schedule:

Date: 11^th December 2023 (Monday)

Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm (HKT)

Venue: Lecture Theatre P1, Chong Yuet Ming Physics Building

Speaker:

Prof. Samuel I. Stupp

Department of Chemistry, Materials Science and Engineering, Medicine, and Biomedical Engineering

Northwestern University

Biography:

Samuel Stupp is Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, Medicine, and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University. He also directs Northwestern’s Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology and the Center for Bio-Inspired Energy Science, an Energy Frontiers Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Stupp’s interdisciplinary research is focused on developing self-assembling supramolecular nanostructures and materials for functions relevant to renewable energy, regenerative medicine, and robotic soft matter. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Spanish Academy, the National Academy of Sciences of Latin America, the National Academy of Sciences of Costa Rica, and the U.S. National Academy of Inventors.

Stupp has won numerous awards over the course of his career, including three American Chemical Society national awards: the Award in Polymer Chemistry, the Ronald Breslow Award for Achievement in Biomimetic Chemistry, and the Ralph F. Hirschmann Award in Peptide Chemistry. He recently received the 2022 Materials Research Society Von Hippel Award, the highest honor awarded by this society. Other awards include the Department of Energy Prize for Outstanding Scientific Accomplishment in Materials Chemistry, the Materials Research Society Medal Award, the Royal Society of Chemistry Award in Soft Matter and Biophysical Chemistry, and the Nanoscience Prize from the International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation, and Engineering, which recognizes lifelong achievement in the field.

Abstract:

The powerful functions of materials in the living world utilize supramolecular systems in which molecules self-assemble through noncovalent connections programmed by their structures. Yet, the design of highly specific interactions between molecules began in earnest only three decades ago motivated by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1987. Our laboratory has focused over the past three decades on integrating this notion of bio-inspired supramolecular engineering into the design of novel materials. I will discuss in my lecture three examples of functional supramolecular materials we need for our future. The first is inspired by the photosynthetic machinery of green plants, creating materials that harvest light to produce fuels for sustainable energy systems. The second example is that of life-like robotic materials that effectively transduce different types of energy into mechanical actuation and locomotion of objects for future technologies. The third topic will be supramolecular biomaterials that mimic extracellular matrices and provide unprecedented bioactivity to regenerate tissues. In this example, I will discuss a recent breakthrough in structural design of supramolecular motion which surprisingly led to biomaterials with potential to reverse paralysis by repairing the brain and the spinal cord.

- ALL ARE WELCOME -