Category: Linkedin-News

Congratulations to Winey group postdoc Hoda Shokrollahzadeh Behbahani! She received the Early Career Researcher Best Poster Award from the ACS PMSE Division at the American Chemical Society Fall 2025 meeting in Washington, DC.

Hoda presented a poster based on our polymer upcycling work with Anne Radzanowski from the Bryan Coughlin group at University of Massachusetts Amherst. We showed that halohydrin-functionalized polyolefins provide a novel, tunable platform for tailoring interfacial properties and enabling orthogonal functionalization toward polymer-to-polymer transformations.

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Yesterday, two Winey group alumni stopped by Penn for a visit. Jinseok Park received his Ph.D. in 2022 and now works as a postdoc at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Jinseok gave a seminar to my current group, and it was great to hear about his continued research progress. Kaitlin W. graduated with her Ph.D. in 2024 and is now at Merck as a Senior Scientist. It’s always a pleasure to welcome back former students and to build connections between former and current students!

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We hosted our collaborators from the University of Konstanz (Germany) including Prof. Stefan Mecking and three of his graduate students (Katharina Scherer, Katrin Wurst, Viola Burlein). The students gave excellent talks in Penn’s new Vagelos Laboratory for Energy Science and Technology (VLEST). We enjoyed many stimulating scientific discussions about recent results, manuscripts, and future research plans. We also had fun comparing German and US culture, and shared many meals highlighting the great food of Philadelphia! Thanks to graduate students Benjamin Ferko, Margaret Brown, and Aubry Hymel for their assistance in coordinating the visit.

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The Winey lab is excited to welcome six undergraduate students to our group this summer.

Left to right:

Allen Jiang, CBE class of 2026, is being mentored by Maggie Brown, working on characterizing ion-containing multiblock polymers.
Alexandra Whittle, CBE class of 2028, is being mentored by Will Drayer, working on simulating anion exchange membrane materials.
Anatoli Beyene, CBE class of 2028, is being mentored by Lindsay Jones, working on Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy of proton exchange membrane materials.
Will McCambridge, MSE class of 2026, is being mentored by Hoda Shokrollahzadeh Behbahani, working on contact angle and surface free energy measurement of poly(halohydrin)s.
Anthony Senouillet, CBE class of 2026, is being mentored by Ben Ferko, working on swelling sulfonated polystyrene with a variety of solvents.
Zixuan Lin (Gina), CBE class of 2027, is being mentored by Katie Sun, working on controlling grafting density of P2VP brushes.

Allen, Will, Anthony, and Gina are all continuing their work from this past academic year, and Alexandra and Anatoli are starting new projects. We are looking forward to a productive and fun summer!

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I’ve returned from a productive and enjoyable trip to Michigan, where I had the opportunity to give four lectures as the 2025 Turner J. Alfrey Visiting Professor. Hoda Shokrollahzadeh Behbahani, a postdoctoral researcher in my group, also gave a fantastic lecture on polymer upcycling. Thank you to my host, Dr. Robert Bubeck, and everyone who came to the symposium, including faculty from MSU St. Andrews, MSU East Lansing, and Central Michigan University.

As part of my trip, I also visited Dow, where I was hosted by wenwen mei, and MSU East Lansing, where I was hosted by Michael Hickner and Robert Ferrier. Thank you to all of my hosts and everyone I met throughout the trip for a great experience!

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I’m honored to be the 2025 the Turner J. Alfrey Visiting Professor and busy preparing for a set of lectures on Tuesday, June 3 in Midland, MI. The schedule for the one-day symposium is below. In addition to my four lectures, Dr. Hoda Shokrollahzadeh Behbahani, a postdoc in my group, will be traveling with me to give a lecture.

You can find a list of past Turner Alfrey Visiting Professors here: https://lnkd.in/eqzqSspQ.

I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends and meeting some new ones.

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Justin Kennemur and I were interviewed for an article in C&ENews about the challenges of replacing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The story highlights the various applications that use PFAS and the many strategies for reducing or eliminating their use. It’s a great read!

Amalie Frischknecht

https://lnkd.in/eQEy8twP

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We are just back from a great APS March meeting! Congratulations to Margaret Brown for winning 2nd place in the DPOLY poster session! Here she is receiving the award from Prof. Rafael Verduzco of Rice University.

Maggie’s poster elucidated why a new set of polar/nonpolar multiblock copolymers fails to form the double gyroid morphology. We computed a stretching ratio for the non-polar block and the gyroid only forms when the stretching ratio is smaller than 0.77.

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This week, we hosted some of our Port5 project grad student collaborators for an in-person meeting. Zana Nadia Singleton from Justin Kennemur‘s group at Florida State and S. Amirali Mousavi Shahri from Michael Hickner‘s group at Michigan State joined us to share their work, learn about our experiments, and connect with our team. Thanks for coming, Zana and Amirali!

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