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Dr. Helen Tran
University of Toronto
Macromolecular Bioelectronics
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
SSB 7172 @ 3:30 p.m.
Host: Graduate Caucus
Abstract
Next-generation electronics will autonomously respond to local stimuli and be seamlessly integrated with the human body, opening the doors for opportunities in environmental monitoring, advanced consumer products, and health diagnostics for personalized therapy. For example, biodegradable electronics promise to accelerate the integration of electronics with health care by obviating the need for costly device-recovery surgeries that increase infection risk. Moreover, the environmentally critical problem of discarded electronic waste would be relieved. The underpinning of such next-generation electronics is the development of new materials with a wide suite of functional properties beyond our current toolkit. Organic polymers are a natural bridge between electronics and soft matter, where the vast chemical design space allows tunability of electronic, mechanical, and transient properties. Our research group leverages the rich palette of polymer chemistry to design new materials encoded with information for self-assembly, degradability, and electronic transport. In this talk, I will share an overview of projects underway in our group.
Speaker Biography
Dr. Tran is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Chemistry (co-appointed in the Department of Chemical Engineering). She was an Intelligence Community postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University under the mentorship of Prof. Zhenan Bao in the Chemical Engineering Department, where she worked on stretchable and biodegradable electronics. She received her BS in Chemistry with a minor in Chemical Engineering from the University of California—Berkeley in 2009, conducting undergraduate research with Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu (Electrical Engineering, Berkeley) and Prof. Christopher Schuh (Material Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). In the two subsequent years, Dr. Tran was a post-baccalaureate fellow and Scientific Engineering Assistant in Dr. Ronald Zuckermann’s research group at the Molecular Foundry at Berkeley National Labs, exploring the self-assembly of biomimetic polymers into 2D nanosheets. She completed her PhD at Columbia University in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Luis Campos as a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellow, broadly investigating hierarchical ordering and periodic patterning in block copolymer systems. To date, she has been awarded the Agilent Cary Recognition for Scientific Innovation Award, 2022 C&EN Talented 12, the Dorothy Shoichet Women Faculty in Science Award of Excellence, International Center for Materials Research fellowship, and George Pegram Award. Also, she was selected as a AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador for her outreach endeavors, leading to media opportunities such as being featured on the CBS TV show Mission Unstoppable and on the Girl Scouts Cadette Badge Workbook for Exploring STEM Careers. Dr. Tran has been committed to scientific outreach, endorses communication among interdisciplinary disciplines, and continually strives to become a supportive mentor.