Published:
Author: Emily Flinchum

Thi Vo, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)  to receive funding through the 2024 Early Career Research Program (ECRP). This year, 91 early career scientists from across the country will receive a combined $138 million in funding through the program which is aimed at strengthening the nation’s scientific workforce by supporting researchers as they create their formative work at the outset of their careers.

Vo is the only Johns Hopkins University faculty member to receive this award this year. He will investigate the creation of programmable polymers that can fold themselves into various shapes, with potential applications in filtration, catalysis, and smart materials.

“It is an honor to receive this recognition from the DOE. I am excited to use this opportunity to expand my research,” said Vo, whose research areas include colloidal and nanoparticle self-assembly, supramolecular engineering, polymer physics, molecular simulations, and computational materials design. “The major problem with designing polymer folding currently is their complex shapes and sizes. This makes predicting their behavior difficult. To understand how these polymers will fold, we need to consider how their shapes, connections, and interactions work together.”

Vo’s project aims to overcome this challenge leveraging both theory and simulation to uncover the driving forces behind polymer folding. He says his results could aid in the development of new polymers, including ones used for soft robotics.

“The research will establish polymer origami as a synthetic counterpart of protein folding while highlighting the universal principles that underpin macromolecular folding. These insights can enhance current protein engineering strategies, leading to transformative advancements that extend beyond polymer self-assembly,” said Vo.