EPSCoR Research Fellows: NSF: Automated Discovery of Controlled Radical Polymerization Approaches for Olefin-Containing Copolymers

This Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) EPSCoR Research Fellows project provides a fellowship to an Assistant Professor and graduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi. The work will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Craig Hawker at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). Through the fellowship, the Principal Investigator (PI)'s team will create copolymers of olefins and standard polar vinyl monomers with controllable size, shape, and olefin incorporation. Specifically, the project will leverage robotic chemistry platforms to screen many promising synthetic conditions for high olefin incorporation. Successful completion of this project will yield strategies for creating olefin-containing copolymers with exceptional mechanical and adhesive properties. Principles of automated experimentation will be incorporated into the PI's outreach and teaching, spreading the ideas behind high-throughput experimentation across the State of Mississippi. Polyolefins and polar vinyl polymers dominate the polymer landscape, accounting for approximately 70% of the 430 million tons of polymer produced in 2025. Attempts to synthesize polymers that exhibit features of olefins and polar vinyl monomers (PVMs) are limited to a narrow compositional window of <15 mol% comonomer incorporation. The proposed work will leverage catalysts during radical polymerization to synthesize olefin-PVM copolymers with a far wider range of olefin incorporation (up to 50 mol%). Promising synthetic conditions will be adapted to controlled radical polymerization approaches to afford control over the molecular weight and architecture of olefin-containing copolymers. To accomplish this, the project team will leverage a combination of automated synthesis and high throughput characterization tools at the NSF BioPACIFIC Materials Innovation Platform at UCSB. Completion of the project will equip the PI and their team with expertise in automated workflows and provide a large, high-quality dataset suitable for the development of predictive Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning models. Together, these benefits will advance the PI’s long-term goals of obtaining high-throughput equipment and developing predictive design tools for olefin-containing copolymers. The principles of automated experimentation will be disseminated throughout Mississippi in the PI's lectures, summer research programs, and outreach efforts. This project is supported by the EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program: EPSCoR Research Fellows (ERF). The ERF program supports early- and mid-career investigators in eligible jurisdictions to develop collaborations at the nation’s private, government or academic research institutions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.