His American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) grant involves the synthesis of novel polymeric shapes and evaluation of the resulting properties exhibited by these polymeric materials. Polymers are long chain macromolecules, which are commonly synthesized from petrochemical feedstocks. A standard, linear polymer has the basic shape of a string, and typically assumes a random coil configuration. At sufficiently high molecular weight or chain length, a melt of linear polymers assumes an entangled configuration. Read the full story…