Mara Kuenen (second from left), a Ph.D. student in assistant professor Rachel Letteri's polymer biomaterials lab, with other prize winners at the Tosoh Polymer Conference.
Chemical engineering Ph.D. student Mara Kuenen won the first-place poster prize at the recent Tosoh Polymer Conference 2022 for her research, “Degradable poly(β-amino ester)s: Unpacking the interplay between solution pH, solubility and hydrolysis to control material lifetime.”
The poster described Kuenen's research designing and synthesizing negatively charged degradable polymers that can be used to deliver “cargo” for example, antimicrobial peptides for therapeutic purposes.
Kuenen, who works in assistant professor Rachel Letteri's lab, focuses on designing materials with controlled lifetimes to address challenges such as plastic waste pollution and drug delivery. Her work includes investigating new uses for poly(β-amino ester)s polymers that carry inherent traits such as pH-responsiveness and degradability to expand the functional areas in which the materials can be applied.The three-day Tosoh Polymer Conference included a one-day short course and a two-day conference focusing on advances in polymer science. The conference brings together polymer science expertise within industry, academia and government to cover a wide array of topics critical to solving challenges.
The Tosoh award is Kuenen's second conference poster award this spring. She won at the American Chemical Society's ACS Spring 2022 meeting in San Diego, competing in the society's Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering division.