MIT’s fourth annual Polymer Day, held March 12, 2014, proved to be our best yet! The day featured a contest with over forty posters, corporate participants with product demonstrations, a lively flow of visitors throughout the afternoon, a symposium, and of course great free food. Hearty thanks to all of this year’s poster presenters!
We’d like to thank all of our sponsors, Cabot Corporation, Cambridge Polymer Group, Arkema, and FormLabs, our judges Dr. Robert Barsotti (Arkema), Dr. Anuj Bellare (Brigham and Women’s Hospital), Dr. Gavin Braithwaite (Cambridge Polymer Group), Dr. Geoffrey Moeser (Cabot Corp.), and Drs. Simone Musso and S. Sherry Zhu (Schlumberber-Doll Research). Special thanks as well to Dr. Marco A. Villalobos, our contact at Cabot who was helpful both with judges and arranging sponsorship.
This year’s entries were a diverse and challenging lot for our judges, nevertheless, the following entries were selected for our winner’s circle:
From L to R: Prof. Darrell Irvine (Director, PPST)
Runners-Up: Benjamin Grena and Rosanna Lim
Second Prize: Nisarg Shah and Shefali Lathwal
Grand Prize: Dr. Eilaf Ahmed
NOT SHOWN: Hangbo Zhao and Dr. Saptarshi Chattopadhyay
(Runners-Up)
PHOTO CREDIT: Michelle K. Sing
Congratulations to this year’s poster contest winners!
This year’s symposium featured presentations by an outstanding line-up of MIT polymer researchers:
Eric M. Arndt (PPST Graduate Student, Prof. Christine Ortiz)
“Design principles of Bombardier Beetle Defensive Glands”
Matthew J. Glassman (Chemical Engineering Graduate Student, Prof. Bradley D. Olsen),
“Responsive toughening of shear thinning protein hydrogels by block co-polymer self-assembly”
Aleksander Zhukhovitskiy (Chemistry Graduate Student, Prof. Jeremiah Johnson)
“Novel methods for surface functionalization and gel synthesis through organometallic coordination”
Warm thanks to our three presenters for sharing their research.
