Prize Recipient

Darrin J. Pochan
University of Delaware

"For advancing our understanding of the physics of assembly and chain conformation of synthetic polypeptides."

Darrin Pochan is currently an associate professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department as well as the Delaware Biotechnology Institute at the University of Delaware. Darrin joined the UD MSEG department in 1999 after a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.S. and Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a National Research Council Post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD. The Pochan group research program involves the contruction of new materials and nanostructures via molecular self-assembly mechanisms. Materials of interest include multicompartment, novel micelles, hierarchically structured hydrogels, and the directed assembly of inorganic nanoparticles. Recent honors for Darrin include an NSF Career Award, the DuPont Young Faculty Award, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Dillon medal from the American Physical Society. Currently, Darrin also serves as Associate Editor for North America of Soft Matter, a new interdisciplinary journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry. Darrin is active in the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, the Materials Research Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Society of Rheology, and the Neutron Scattering Society of America.