Chairs and Committee

His research interests are in the area of chemistry, physics, and engineering of polymers and advanced functional materials including ordered structure, morphology, phase transition thermodynamics, kinetics, and molecular motions. His recent interests in particular are focusing on nanohybrid materials with different molecular chemical structures and physical topologies, architectures, and interactions and their assemblies in the bulk, solution, and thin films. He is also active in developing researches of conducting polymers, photovoltaics, polymer optics, and photonics. Stephen Z. D. Cheng currently holds the R. C. Musson & Trustees Professor and serves as the Dean of the College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering at the University of Akron. He is the recipient of Presidential Young Investigator Award (1991), John H. Dillon Medal (APS, 1995), Mettler-Toledo Award (NATAS, 1999), TA-Instrument Award (ICTAC, 2004), PMSE Cooperative Research Award (ACS, 2005), Polymer Physics Prize (APS, 2013), SPSJ International Award (Society of Polymer Science, Japan, 2017) and other awards and recognitions. Cheng has been a Fellow of AAAS and APS and an Honorable Fellow of Chinese Chemical Society. He has been elected as a member of the National Academic of Engineering of US (2008).

His research interest focuses on the kinetics and mechanisms of controlled/living polymerizations, the design of complex polymer and hybrid structures by precision polymerization techniques and on self-organized nanostructures obtained from these polymers in bulk and solution. Structures of interest include multi-compartment micelles, soft Janus particles, cylindrical core-shell brushes, and hybrids of polymers and inorganic or biological materials. He has published about 440 peer-reviewed research papers and reviews, 21 patents and he edited six books. His papers have been cited more than 26,000 times with an h-index of 83 (Google Scholar). He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Polymer.

He was Invited Visiting Professor in Shanghai, Paris, Montreal, Kyoto, Sydney, Gliwice (Poland), Midland (Michigan), Hangzhou (China), and Tokyo. Awards include the IUPAC MACRO Distinguished Polymer Scientist Award (2004), the Hermann Staudinger Prize of the German Chemical Society (2012), the Turner Alfrey Visiting Professorship at Michigan Molecular institute (2014), the Ralph Milkovich Lectures at Akron University (2017) and the International Award of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (SPSJ, 2018). In 2011 he became the first Fellow of the Polymer Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society not residing in the United States.

He discovered Cu-mediated atom transfer radical polymerization, commercialized in 2004 in US, Japan and Europe. He has co-authored >1000 publications (cited >126,000 times, h-index 171, Google Scholar) and holds 59 US patents. Matyjaszewski received 2017 Franklin Medal in Chemistry, 2015 Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences, 2014 National Institute of Materials Science (Japan) Award, 2011 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, 2009 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, and from the ACS: 2015 Overberger Prize, 2013 AkzoNobel North America Science Award, 2011 Hermann Mark Award, 2011 Award in Applied Polymer Science, 2002 Polymer Chemistry Award, 1995 Creative Polymer Chemistry Award. He received 10 honorary degrees and is a member of National Academy of Engineering, Polish Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, and National Academy of Inventors.

www.cmu.edu/maty

Full biography coming soon.