Journal of Materials Chemistry Blog

In April 2022, the Society for Biomaterials held their annual meeting in Baltimore, USA. Journal of Materials Chemistry B and Materials Advances sponsored this event along with companion journal Biomaterials Science.

We would like to congratulate the winners of the SFB Postdoctoral Research Award. Check out the award winners and learn about their research in our interview below.

Mykel Green: 1st Prize

The success of stem cell regenerative therapies has been crippled by low cell survival, poor retention in the target tissue, uncontrolled differentiation, and induction of host immune response. My work seeks to develop a PEG-based hydrogel carrier to address these concerns and improve engraftment efficiency by protecting the fragile blood-producing stem cells during direct delivery into the bone marrow and increasing cell retention through controlled cell release. Successful completion of this work and its subsequent studies will lead to an improved understanding of the pathophysiology of SCD and the development of my hydrogel system as a tool to target other bone marrow transplantation-reliant curative therapies.

1. What inspired you to go into your area of specific research?
While studying biology at Morehouse College, I fell in love with sickle cell disease. It’s a simple mutation, but the consequences are physiologically disastrous. Blood is nearly ubiquitous; therefore, all biomedical researchers can study it, but it is significantly under-resourced and under-studied relative to other conditions. I want to correct this injustice for patients with sickle cell and other health disparities.

2. What is one of the most rewarding things about your area of research?
I love creating polymers! Something about synthesis excites me, especially trying to develop a new protocol. It is akin to cooking from scratch; you always take great pride in the final product (except when results are unfavorable).

3. What are your next steps for your research/career?
In the immediate future, I hope to create a definitive body of research supporting my hydrogel carrier as a functional bone marrow transplantation modality in a non-diseased animal model. Eventually, I will begin testing in a sickle cell model and tailor the hydrogel to address its many challenges. I expect these studies to be a significant part of my early-stage investigator work, among many other related projects.

Teresa Rapp: 2nd Prize

Ruthenium Crosslinkers for Hydrogel Formation with Applications in Tissue Culture and Cell Delivery My work focuses on the development of new molecular crosslinkers that respond to unique external stimuli, specifically light. This work discussed the synthesis and application of two new ruthenium-based hydrogel crosslinkers that can selectively respond to red (617 nm) and green (530 nm) light. Used in conjunction with an ortho-nitrobenzyl-based hydrogel crosslinker, I created a hydrogel system that softens in response to three unique, visible light inputs. I showed these hydrogels are cytocompatible, orthogonal, and can be used to study cellular fate in 3D.

1. What inspired you to go into your area of specific research?
A chemist by training, I was first inspired by the incredible potential to create new functional biomaterials by innovation in the chemistry space. This field has allowed me to pursue both my interest in basic science as I discover new molecules, and demonstrate their real world feasibility in a product that could transform the work of so many research groups across the world. I hope to continue to work at the forefront of biomaterial development throughout my academic career.

2. What is one of the most rewarding things about your area of research?
The depth of knowledge I get to pursue as I work in this area. I love my work in synthetic chemistry and materials development, and this area provides many opportunities for me to collaborate with bioengineers, biologists, clinicians, and many others; opportunities that allow me to learn about a vast range of natural sciences.

3. What are your next steps for your research/career?
I will be entering the tenure track faculty job market this year, looking to start my own research lab to explore the potential of these new photochemistries in the next generation of biomaterials.

Kimberly Nellenbach: 3rd Prize

I presented research focused on our lab’s novel hemostatic materials. We’ve developed Platelet-like Particles or PLPs that are capable of mimicking the ability of native platelets to form a platelet plug and stem bleeding during traumatic injury. My recent efforts have been focused on analyzing the in vivo safety and efficacy of these PLPs. In my research, it was determined that at an optimized dose, PLPs are able to significantly reduce blood loss across multiple models of traumatic injury without any deleterious off-target thrombotic effects.

1. What inspired you to go into your area of specific research?
Tissue engineering has been a long interest of mine because of family and friends who experienced tissue and organ damage due to injuries or chronic inflammatory illnesses.  I wanted to play an integral role in helping restore, maintain, or improve this damage.  I narrowed my focus of research on wound healing/hemostatic materials when I became part of the Advanced Wound Healing Lab at NCSU and wanted to contribute to moving this research forward.

2. What is one of the most rewarding things about your area of research?
One of the most rewarding aspects of developing hemostatic materials is that our lab is working towards filling a critical need, especially given the current nationwide blood shortage. 

3. What are your next steps for your research/career?
The next steps in my research career are to continue to explore ways to enhance wound healing and treat bleeding by investigating the efficacy of our lab’s platelet-like technology in different models of coagulopathies and impaired wound healing

We would also like to congratulate the following finalists for the SFB Postdoctoral Research Award:

Jason Guo

Ana Mora Boza

Jingjing Gao

Please join us in congratulating all the winners and the finalists of the SFB Postdoctoral Research Award 2022!

The Royal Society of Chemistry has announced an open call to submit your plastics research to our themed collections on ‘Polymer Upcycling’ and ‘Plastic Conversion’

The Royal Society of Chemistry is committed to sustainable plastics research and has published a policy statement regarding plastic waste. With increasing impact of plastic waste on the environment, it is necessary to research ways in which we can have a sustainable future for plastics.

Plastics research is interdisciplinary and involves a wide range of chemical scientists. As such, we invite you to contribute to our cross-journal themed collections by submitting your work to Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B, C, Polymer Chemistry or Catalysis Science & Technology.

Polymer Upcycling

Joint themed collection between Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B and C

In 2015 alone, the global waste generated by plastic packaging applications was 82.7 metric tons (Mt). Currently, waste management practices for the end-of-life plastics exploit landfilling, industrial energy recovery from municipal solid waste incineration, pyrolysis and recycling. Due to the ubiquity and necessity of plastics in our daily life, the elimination or reduction of plastics is not foreseeable in the near future and fundamentally new science is needed to describe and understand the polymers, interfaces, decomposition and upcycling of plastics. This Themed Collection aims to explore the latest developments in materials characterization, polymer design and synthesis, physical chemistry and molecular understanding of plastic decomposition and transformation that contribute to a broad knowledge base for upcycling waste plastics.

Submissions should fit within the scope of  Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Journal of Materials Chemistry B or Journal of Materials Chemistry C. We welcome high quality studies across all fields of materials chemistry in the form of full Papers, Communications and Review-type articles (Reviews, Highlights or Perspectives) and we invite authors to select the journal that best suits their submission.

For more information, visit our open calls page

Guest Edited by:

Blair Brettmann (Georgia Institute of Technology), Marco Fraga (Instituto Nacional De Technologia Brasil), Monika Gosecka (Polish Academy of Sciences) and Natalie Stingelin (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Submit your work to Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Journal of Materials Chemistry B or Journal of Materials Chemistry C now!

Plastic Conversion

Joint themed collection between Polymer Chemistry and Catalysis Science & Technology

Catalysts have been the main driver for the design of ever new polymers with highly diverse and specialized properties. In this themed issue, we aim to highlight research that makes use of catalysis to optimize the reverse. How can we get the most value out of plastic waste? In this quest, we especially welcome manuscripts that address the challenges unique to plastics. These include but are not limited to additive impurities; mixed polymer streams; how to contact the very viscous, high molecular weight polymer with the (micro-)porous catalyst or a cleavage agent and more broadly catalytic conversion of sustainable polymeric materials for a circular plastic economy. Unconventional approaches via photo-, electro- or mechano-catalytic approaches and combinations thereof are also very welcome. We highly encourage to place the work in the context of performance metrics of green chemistry.

Submissions should fit the scope of either Polymer Chemistry or Catalysis Science & Technology. We would suggest that articles focused on synthetic and polymer chemistry aspects would be best suited to Polymer Chemistry, whereas articles focused on catalytic and/or related methodological advances would be appropriate for Catalysis Science & Technology. The collaborative joint special issue recognizes that management of plastic wastes relies on research conducted at the intersection of polymer chemistry and catalysis. You may submit to whichever journal you feel is most relevant to your current research. Please note that your article may be offered a transfer to the alternate journal if deemed more appropriate by the handling editor.

For more information, visit our open calls page

Guest Edited by:

Professor Ina Vollmer (Utrecht University, Netherlands), Professor George Huber (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA), Professor Haritz Sardon (POLYMAT, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain) and Professor Zhibo Li (Qingdao University of Science and Technology, China)

Submit your work to Polymer Chemistry or Catalysis Science & Technology now!

If you would like to contribute to either of these themed collections, you can submit your article directly through the journal’s online submission service. Please add a “note to the editor” in the submission form when uploading your files to say that this is a contribution to the respective themed collection. The Editorial Office reserves the right to check suitability of submissions in relation to the scope of the collection, and inclusion of accepted articles in the final themed collection is not guaranteed.

If you would like more information about the ‘Polymer Upcycling’ themed collection, please email Materials-rsc@rsc.org. For more information about the ‘Plastic Conversion’ themed collection, please email Polymers-rsc@rsc.org.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and showcasing this important research in our collections.

We were delighted to sponsor Women in Renewable Energy (WiRE) at E-MRS 2022!

We would like to congratulate the following poster award winners at the 2022 WiRE E-MRS 2022.

The prize winners were sponsored by the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, C, and Materials Horizons

Meet the winners

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Deimantė Vaitukaitytė, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania Deimante Vaitukaityte obtained Bachelor (2017) and Master’s (2019) degrees in Applied Chemistry from Kaunas University of Technology (Kaunas, Lithuania). She has been a PhD student since 2019 at the same university, with research focusing on the development of hole transporting materials for perovskite solar cells. She also works as a junior researcher in prof. Vytautas Getautis research group at Kaunas University of Technology. We were delighted to present Deimantė an award for Best Poster at WiRE E-MRS 2022.

		Shegufta Upama, IMDEA Materials Institute, Spain Shegufta hails from Dhaka, Bangladesh. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering with Honors from the University of Houston in Texas, USA. In August 2020, she started her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, where she joined Dr. Micah Green’s lab. A year later, she moved to Madrid, Spain, to continue her Ph.D. research in Dr. Juan José Vilatela’s group at IMDEA Materials Institute. Her research focuses on developing CNT fiber/inorganic hybrid materials and non-conventional heating methods for the rapid and targeted processing of materials. We were delighted to present Shegufta an award for Best Question at WiRE E-MRS 2022.
		Kenedy Tabah, Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Barcelona, Spain Kenedy Tabah is a doctoral student at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Barcelona, Spain. After obtaining a BSc in Chemistry from the University of Buea, Cameroon and an Erasmus Mundus master in Chemical Nanoengineering, he developed an ever-growing interest in nanotechnology for renewable energy. His current research comprises fabrication of Perovskite Solar Cells and analysis of their stability through Machine Learning. We were delighted to present Kenedy an award for Best Poster at WiRE E-MRS 2022.

		Francesca De Rossi, University of Rome, Italy After her PhD degree in Telecommunications and Microelectronics Engineering on flexible dye solar cells, awarded by University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’ in 2014, Dr De Rossi spent nearly 4 years abroad, working as a Technology Transfer Fellow at SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre, Swansea University (UK). She was part of the PV team led by Prof T.M. Watson, focusing on the upscaling of printable perovskite solar cells, and lead of the stability activity within his group. She is currently a fixed term researcher (RTD-A), funded by the EU H2020 project APOLO, led by Prof F. Brunetti, on smart designed, fully printed flexible perovskite solar cells (https://project-apolo.eu/). We were delighted to present Francesca an award for Best Poster at WiRE E-MRS 2022.
		Dr. Ludmila Cojocaru, University of Bordeaux, France Ludmila Cojocaru received her PhD from the University of Bordeaux (France) for her work on the synthesis of semiconducting metal oxide nanoparticles and their application in liquid-state dye-sensitized solar cells. Subsequently, she was awarded by the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) as a first post-doc fellow in the framework of the Japanese-French Associate Laboratory for Next-generation Photovoltaic Cells (LIA Next-PV) (LiaNextPV) at the University of Tokyo, and then, continue working in a national (NEDO) Japanese project at the same University. During her almost five years of work in Japan, she developed the solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells and then moved to the perovskite solar cells. As a pioneer working in the field of perovskite solar cells since the earlier stage of their discovery, she concentrated her work on the fabrication of high-performance devices focusing on interface engineering of perovskite and provided a plausible reason for the origin of IV hysteresis. Later, she moved to the University of Freiburg (Germany) where she developed the evaporation process for perovskite and applied it in tandem configuration with silicon solar cells, working in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy (Germany). Now, she is a Junior Researcher at the University of Bordeaux in an Initiative of Excellence “Make Our Planet Great Again”. In this project, her objective is to integrate perovskite solar cells and supercapacitors connected through a common carbon extracted from biomass and fabricate sustainable energy conversion-storage devices able to keep continuous power in intermittent light. We were delighted to present Ludmila an award for Best Poster at WiRE E-MRS 2022.
		Fanny Baumann, Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Barcelona, Spain Fanny Baumann got her Master in Science Engineering at Lund University with a specialty in Nanoscience Engineering and Nanomaterials in 2020 after an eventful academic journey combining studies with professional windsurfing. For her Master Thesis work she spent one semester at LSPM EPFL supervised by Anders Hagfeldt and Eva Unger, resulting in her also participating in the Perovskite Database project. She have been in the group of Monica Lira Cantú at NMPE ICN2 since September 2021 when she started my PhD position in Material science. We were delighted to present Fanny an award for Best Poster at WiRE E-MRS 2022.