Rebecca Schulman, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, is among 49 young scientists across the country to receive grants from the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Science under the agency’s Early Career Research Program.
Schulman, who teaches in the Whiting School of Engineering‘s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, will receive $750,000 over the next five years for work on designing hydrogels. These polymer materials are resilient to different types of damage. Such self-healing materials could function over long periods of time without the need for replacement, reducing manufacturing and installation costs and energy expenditures. Schulman’s laboratory works on designing a range of materials that self-assemble and use molecular signals to adapt to their environment and recover from damage. The hydrogels developed as part of this project could be used in a range of applications, including for biology, medicine, and energy.