Presenter: Prof. Haifeng Gao (Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of Notre Dame, Indiana 46556)
Topic: Combining Simplicity and Controllability to Produce Highly Branched Polymers
Time: 9:30 AM, Jun. 11^th (Monday)
Location: Conference Room B, BLDG 909-1F

Abstract:
This presentation discusses our recent progress on developing one-pot strategies to synthesize functional polymers with controlled nanostructures and exploring their intriguing properties. One-pot polymerization methods were developed for facile synthesis of hyperbranched polymers with tunable molecular weights, low dispersity and high degree of branching. These strategies include 1) the polymerization of inimers in confined space and 2) chain-growth polymerization of AB2 monomers in solution. The produced hyperbranched polymers can be easily functionalized with various reactive groups in different layers and show promising properties as unimolecular containers in nanomedicines and polymer catalysis.

Biography:
Haifeng Gao is an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of Notre Dame. After receiving his Ph.D. degree in 2008 from Matyjaszewski group at Carnegie Mellon University and his postdoc training in Frechet group at UC Berkeley, he in 2011 joined the University of Notre Dame as an assistant professor. In May 2017, Haifeng was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. His current research focuses on the design and synthesis of functional polymers with controlled nanostructures by determining their fundamental structure-property relationships. Haifeng has co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed papers and 6 book chapters. His publications so far have been cited for more than 4000 times. Haifeng was the recent recipient of 2010 AkzoNobel Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Polymer Chemistry from ACS, 2014 Army Young Investigator Program (YIP) award, 2016 NSF CAREER award.