Area of Research:

• Synthetic Macromolecules
• Drug Carriers
• Self-assembling Nanomaterials
• Sensors
• Cross-linked polymers & gels
• Biodegradable Polymers

Current Research:

My overall objective and agenda is just not only building a research plan that impacts future technologies, but also training my students in the multidisciplinary field of polymer science where students in my lab have the privilege to come across a variety of novel monomer syntheses, technical know-how of living/controlled polymerization and material characterization. Training students across these areas, in my view, ultimately results into a new breed of robust research scholars with a broad background necessary for any career they pursue. The broad, long-term objective of our group is to develop polymers that have great potential application in the field of drug delivery and sensors. Being able to build chemically rich monomers and placing them into discrete locations within polymeric architectures will yield novel functional materials. It will lead to a new paradigm in materials synthesis where block copolymers which have been commonly exploited are much more than a simple carrier of drug molecules. This research combines state of the art organic and polymer chemistry with structural characterization and drug release measurements. One of the major advantages of ongoing work in designing prodrugs is that one block is linked to the nanoparticle so the drug-carrier’s path can be influenced by external stimuli like magnetic force facilitating targeted delivery. Controlled/living polymerization techniques such as ROMP and/or ATRP will be used to synthesize random and block copolymers where the composition of the copolymer length that contain drugs can be controlled. Also development of polymers that are used to sense heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury is currently under progress.