Chang Ryu, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rensselaer, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Ryu will use the projected five-year, $445,000 grant to explore new and improved techniques for separating and analyzing polymers, which are widely used as plastics. Ryu works with polymers in nano-sized pores to better understand the chemistry of these materials in the nanoscale environment.

Ryu's research has a variety of potential technological applications, including the purification of complex polymers to create new materials and the discovery of new ways to separate macromolecules such as protein and DNA.

"Professor Ryu's work will lead to a better understanding of synthetic polymer adsorption in nanopores with wide-ranging potential applications to industry," said Wolf von Maltzahn, acting vice president for research at Rensselaer. "His research will have important implications in developing new separation techniques for biological macromolecules such as proteins and DNA. He is also committed to involving students at all levels of science education in his work."

At Rensselaer, Ryu will engage undergraduate and graduate students in interdisciplinary research involving polymer adsorption, high-performance liquid chromatography, and microscopy. Ryu teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses on polymer, physical, materials, and analytical chemistry.

Ryu also plans to continue and establish additional community outreach programs related to nanotechnology and science education. He is coordinator of the "Bringing Nanotechnology to the Classroom" program of Rensselaer's Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures, which gives high school students "hands-on" laboratory experiences to complement their science education. As part of this program, Ryu will continue development of the "Virtual Polymer Laboratory" Web site he created to provide high school chemistry teachers with visual teaching modules of wet chemistry experiments and polymer theories.

The CAREER Award is given to faculty members at the beginning of their careers and is one of the NSF's most competitive and prestigious awards, placing emphasis on high-quality research and novel education initiatives.

Ryu joined the Rensselaer faculty in 2000. In addition to his research through Rensselaer's Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures, one of only six NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Centers in the United States, Ryu is also a collaborator on polymer research associated with the New York State Center for Polymer Synthesis at Rensselaer. Ryu earned a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota and received master's and bachelor's degrees in chemical technology from Seoul National University in Korea.

Published January 31, 2005