Prize Recipient


Recipient Picture

Bradley D. Olsen
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Citation:

"for significantly expanding our understanding of the physics of polymers, including the self-assembly of block copolymers incorporating a fully folded protein, the influence of polymer shape on diffusion; for engineering novel gels; and for updating the theory of the modulus of a network."

Background:

Bradley D. Olsen an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. He earned his S.B. in Chemical Engineering at MIT in 2003 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of California - Berkeley in 2009 studying with Prof. Rachel Segalman. He was then a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology with Profs. David Tirrell, Julia Kornfield, and Zhen-Gang Wang from 2008 to 2009. He started as an assistant professor at MIT in December 2009. Olsen’s research focuses on engineering new polymer, biohybrid, and protein materials and understanding the novel polymer physics required to control the nanoscale structure and properties of these complex systems. His group investigates the relationships between molecular structure and self-assembly, applying concepts from block copolymer assembly and polymer gels to understand material properties. Their work designs new materials as models to advance our fundamental understanding of polymer physics through experiment and theory while also developing specific new materials for a variety of different applications in energy, health, and national defense. Olsen is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.


Selection Committee:

2018 Selection Committee Members: Sanat Kumar (Chair), Wes Burghardt, Steve Hudson, Lynn Loo, M. Muthukumar, Darrin Pochan, Chinedum Osuji