Prize Recipient

Rachel Segalman
University of California, Berkeley

Citation:

"For fundamental and technological contributions to the field of polymer science and engineering, especially in the area of rod-coil block copolymers."

Background:

Rachel A. Segalman received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering with highest honors from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998. She then performed her doctoral work in Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2002).  Following her PhD, Segalman was a postdoctoral fellow at the Universite Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg France working on conjugated polymer synthesis. She joined the faculty of UC Berkeley in the spring of 2004 as the Charles Wilke Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009.  Segalman is also a faculty scientist in the Lawrence Berkleey National Laboratory Materials Science Division.  Her research focuses on understanding and controlling the self-assembly of functional block copolymers, particularly those with rod-coil shape.  She also has interest in designing polymeric and hybrid materials for energy applications involving thermoelectrics, photovoltaics, and solar fuels.   Among other awards, Segalman is an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar, and has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering  (PECASE), MDV Innovators Award, Hellman Family Young Faculty Award, 3M Untenured Faculty Award, NSF CAREER Award, Intel Young Faculty Seed Award, and Chateaubriand Postdoctoral Fellowship.  

Selection Committee:

Jane E.G. Lipson, Chair; S.T. Milner; P. Nealy; D. Pochan; J. Torkelson; M. Foster; B.L. Farmer; K. Winey