Liwen Chen, a doctoral student in the department of chemical
and biological engineering at Rensselaer, recently won the prestigious Frank J.
Padden Jr. Award from the 2019 American Physical Society March Meeting in
Boston, Massachusetts. The award is given to a graduate student for “Excellence
in Polymer Physics Research.”

She received this honor after presenting an oral
presentation titled “Close-packed Structures of Block Copolymer Micelles
Induced by the Size of Crystallites,” which explored the importance of the size
of crystal domains in polymorphism of materials.

“Polymorphism is an important characteristic of crystalline
materials for numerous practical applications, such as microelectronics and
drugs. But control of polymorphism of materials still remains one of the most
challenging problems in materials research,” said Sangwoo Lee, Chen’s thesis
adviser, and assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at
Rensselaer.

Lee said that Chen’s research and findings “will benefit the
design of material processing procedures for control of crystal structures and
material functions.”