Speaker: Professor Craig Hawker, University of California at Santa Barbara

Title: Bio-inspired Materials: New Approaches to Molecular Building Blocks

Abstract: Marine organisms use organic building blocks in unique ways to achieve materials with exceptional properties. With inspiration from these natural systems, the design of synthetic building blocks to mimic these capabilities and extend them to common polymeric materials will be described.

Bio: Professor Craig J. Hawker, FRS is the Clarke Professor and holds the Alan and Ruth Heeger Chair of Interdisciplinary Science at UCSB where he directs the California Nanosystems Institute and the Dow Materials Instiutute. He came to UCSB in 2004 after eleven years as a Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA.

Professor Hawker’s research activities focus on synthetic polymer chemistry and nanotechnology, integrating fundamental studies with the development of nanostructured materials for advanced properties and functions in microelectronics and biotechnology. This work has led to over 500 peer-reviewed papers and 70 patents with a number of materials being commercialized. He has helped establish a range of start-up companies - Relypsa, Intermolecular, Olaplex, Tricida and has been elected to the National Academy of Inventors. For his pioneering studies, Professor Hawker’s recent honors include the 2017 Charles G. Overberger International Prize for Excellence in Polymer Research, the 2016 Belgian Polymer Award, the 2013 American Chemical Society Award in Polymer Chemistry, the 2012 Centenary Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry and an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society in 2011. Professor Hawker has been honored with election to the Royal Society in 2010.