Dr. Zha has won received an NSF CAREER Award to support the group’s research on interfacial self-assembly of silk proteins!
Profs Ed Palermo and Helen Zha discuss their NSF-funded project on self-disinfecting masks in this podcast: https://news.rpi.edu/approach/2020/10/07
Dr. Zha has been named Senior Advisor to the Materials Innovation Initiative, a non-profit organization working to build the next generation of sustainable, cruelty-free materials for the fashion, automotive, and home goods industries.
Check out our strategy for rapidly synthesizing silk-like polymers using microwave-assisted click chemistry. This new approach yields significantly higher molecular weights in under 30 minutes than conventional step-growth polymerization methods.
Congrats to soon-to-be Professor Amrita Sarkar! She will be starting her tenure-track position at Montclair State University in September. Amrita was the first postdoc in the Zha Lab, and we couldn’t be more proud of her accomplishments!!!
Alex Connor ’23 is this year’s 1st Place winner of the Paul J. and Kathleen M. Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship’s combined spring competition. Connor, a chemical and biological engineering Ph.D. candidate, took the top prize of $8,000 for his presentation on MegaSilk, a synthetic silk for multiple industries in need of strong lightweight material.
Find out more at: https://news.rpi.edu/approach/2020/05/05
PI Zha and Co-PI Ed Palermo (RPI MSE) have been awarded a $200K RAPID grant to develop antiviral coatings for enhancing the usage lifetime of N95 masks. Check out the news coverage:
https://wnyt.com/albany-ny-education-stem/rpi-rensselaer-polytechnic-researchers-working-to-develop-virus-killing-masks-troy-rensselaer-county/5710093/
https://eng.rpi.edu/news/04202020-0000/nsf-support-engineers-look-new-ways-optimize-ppe-during-pandemic
Our review on Chemical Synthesis of Silk-Mimetic Polymers is live!
Jeongae joins the lab as a first year grad student in Chemical Engineering after graduating from Chonbuk National University in South Korea. We’re super excited to have her.
New and “hot” article on the effect of thermal treatments in enhancing mechanical properties of polydopamine coatings. Tanner contributed some fantastic GIWAXS work. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsami.9b15740
The annual AIChE conference is less than a week away! Dr. Zha will be chairing the sessions on Biomimetic Materials on Sunday afternoon starting at 3:30pm and Monday morning starting at 8am. Featured Keynote speaker will be Dr. Nathan Gianneschi from Northwestern on Sunday at 3:30. Location: Hyatt Regency Orlando, Celebration 5 room. Stop by to check out some excellent talks on Biomimetic Materials!
Congratulations to Dr. Amrita Sarkar for being selected to give a talk on her research at the annual RPI cMDIS Research Symposium and to UG researchers Katherine Cianciotti and Chuhan Yuan for presenting posters at the CBIS URP Research symposium!
Dr. Amrita Sarkar has joined the Zha Lab as a new postdoctoral researcher. Amrita recently completed her PhD at University of South Carolina from the lab of Morgan Stefik. She now joins our efforts in the synthesis of biomimetic polymers.
Mary Margaret Sta. Cruz has won an RPI Summer Undergraduate Research Program award. This competitive award will support her 10-week summer research experience in the Zha Lab. Congratulations, Mary!
Dr. Zha presents her postdoctoral research at the ACS 2017 spring conference (San Francisco, CA) in April.
Self-Assembly of exfoliated monolayer crystals as photoswitchable soft matter
Date: Tuesday, April 4
Time: 1:05 - 1:30pm
Location: Moscone Center - Rm 124
Session: Structure to Function in Supramolecular Polymers & Materials (1pm - 5:25pm)