Student Hosted Colloquia: Professor Jeremiah Johnson, MIT
Student Hosted Colloquia: Professor Jeremiah Johnson, MIT (Host: JD Fiest)
**This seminar is available for in-person attendance.**
"Deconstructing Macromolecules"
About the Seminar
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 bulk properties, preventing predictive, rational design of next-generation materials. This talk will highlight our efforts to install cleavable bonds into precise locations within macromolecules, showing how we can use selective bond cleavage to unveil previously hidden features of polymer structure and enable new material functions.
About the Speaker
Jeremiah conducted undergraduate research with Prof. Karen L. Wooley at Washington University in St. Louis where he received a B.S. in biomedical engineering with a second major in chemistry. He then received a PhD in chemistry at Columbia University under the mentorship of Prof. Nicholas J. Turro and Prof. Jeffrey T. Koberstein. In 2011, following a Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship at California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Professors David A. Tirrell and Robert H. Grubbs, he moved to MIT where he is now a Professor of Chemistry. He is also a member of the MIT Program for Polymers and Soft Matter (PPSM), the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard.
Jeremiah 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, he was named as a Finalist for the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists. In recognition of his teaching, he was awarded the 2018 MIT School of Science Undergraduate Teaching Prize. The Johnson research group is focused on the development of methods and strategies for macromolecular synthesis and surface functionalization.
Image Courtesy of MIT