Prize Recipient

Murugappan Muthukumar
University of Massachusetts

"For outstanding theoretical contributions to the fundamental understanding of the statistics of isolated chains, chain dynamics, critical phenomena and polymer self-assembly."

Dr. Muthukumar received his M.Sc. degree from the University of Madras, India, in 1972 and his Ph. D. degree from the University of Chicago in 1979. He then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University in England. He then spent two years as an Assistant Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, after which, he joined the University of Massachusetts in 1983 where he currently is a Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering.

Dr. Muthukumar's research addresses the statistical mechanics of synthetic and natural polymers. Specifically, he works on t he structure, recognition, dynamics and transport of polymer molecules, and self-assembly and kinetics of multi-domain polymer assemblies.

Dr. Muthukumar has received an Alfred p. Sloan fellowship, the APS Dillon Medal, the Maurice Huggins Award of Gordon Conferences, and the Chancellor's Medal of the University of Massachusetts as a University Distinguished Lecturer. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society,, a member of the American Chemical Society, and currently is a Divisional Associate Editor of the Physical Review Letters.