A. Levent Demirel received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering & Physics from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, in 1989, and Ph.D. degree in Physics from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA in 1996. He was postdoctoral researcher at FOM Institute AMOLF in Amsterdam in 1996-1997. He joined Koç University Chemistry Department as faculty member in 1997 where he was promoted to full professor in 2008. Currently, he is the Associate Dean of College of Sciences. He has received TÜBİTAK (Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Council) Young Scientist Award in 1999, TÜBA (Turkish Academy of Sciences) Young Scientist Award in 2001 and Koç University Werner von Siemens Excellence Award in 2003. In 2006, he has been elected as associate member of Turkish Academy of Sciences. His current research interests are in the field of surface and polymer physical chemistry.
Please follow the link for further information on Levent’s research group and his recent paper published in Polymer Chemistry.
What was your inspiration in becoming a chemist?
Though my current research is in the field of physical chemistry, I am a physicist by training. I will be happy as long as I stay in science as a major, whether it is physics or chemistry. I was fond of numbers, calculations and equations as a kid. My aunt was a primary school teacher at a village. When I was about 5 years old, I attended her classes for a while where I met numbers and calculations first time. Then at the high school I had very inspiring physics, chemistry and math teachers. I started as an electrical engineering undergraduate, but my desire to understand single transistor dominated over analyzing complex electronic circuits and I went for PhD in Physics at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I later switched to soft matter physics, by chance, and worked under the supervision of Prof. Steve Granick on viscoelasticity of molecularly thin liquid films. Then at postdoc, I worked on thin films of liquid crystals and block copolymers. There is a lot overlapping in physics and chemistry when you work on soft matter and I naturally moved into the field of physical chemistry after starting as a faculty member at Koç University Chemistry Department.
What was the motivation behind the research in your recent Polymer Chemistry paper? (DOI: 10.1039/C1PY00463H)
The question we are after is quite fundamental and practical: Why are initially clear homogeneous polymer solutions not stable in time and agglomerates formed? Chemists do not like it when chemicals can not be dissolved in a solvent for further analysis or processing, but frequently encounter it in the lab especially with macromolecules. The change in temperature, pH may trigger such irreversible agglomeration among other reasons. Poly(2-isopropyl-2-oxazoline) was known to form irreversible crystalline fibers when kept above cloud point temperature for extended times. We expected the same for poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) (PEOX) as similar interactions are in charge, but could not observe any structure formation for a long time. My PhD student Pınar Tatar Güner was patient enough to wait long (several weeks) to observe that crystalline PEOX fibers are also formed. Then, we controlled this self-assembly process by electrolytes and characterized these fibers structurally.
Why did you choose Polymer Chemistry to publish your work?
As much as I can, I regularly check the contents of every new issue of the major journals in my field. Since its first issue in 2010, I found many high quality papers, very relevant to my research interests in every issue of Polymer Chemistry. It already had high impact on my research and I decided to send it to Polymer Chemistry.
In which upcoming conferences may our readers meet you?
I plan to attend to ACS Spring Meeting in San Diego, USA, in March 2012 where there will be a session on poly(2-oxazoline)s.
How do you spend your spare times?
My wife and I like travelling and spending time in nature.
Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?
I would choose a profession where I can spend more time out in the field – being a farmer, an archeologist, a field biologist, a geologist.
