Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Matt Golder, University of Washington

About the Seminar

Masquerading Soft Materials: Anomalous Behavior in Macromolecular Design

The Golder Research Team utilizes fundamental principles of molecular structure to control synthetic polymer function. Many of society’s greatest advancements spanning health, sanitation, construction, electronics, and transportation have been enabled by the invention and application of plastics. Simultaneously, these materials have created significant concerns about global sustainability, climate impact, and environmental pollution. My laboratory aims to discover new materials and methods that unveil unexpected phenomena on the macroscopic scale; this overarching strategy will produce next-generation designer plastics and reform how commodity plastics are utilized. In this talk, the team’s efforts towards these common goals will be outlined in the context of recent work centered on: (1) synthetic transformations fueled by initiator and methodology development, and (2) molecular design of new soft materials.

About the Speaker

Matt received his BS in Chemistry from the University of Rochester (NY) in 2010 working with Prof. Patrick Holland. Following graduation, he began graduate school in the lab of Prof. Ramesh Jasti at Boston University. He relocated with the lab to the University of Oregon in 2014, where he earned his PhD in 2015. Matt was then an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Jeremiah Johnson’s laboratory at MIT where he worked on the synthesis of drug delivery agents and unimolecular macromolecules. He began his independent career in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington in 2019. 

Host: Yan Xia