Prof. Jessica Lamb
Title: Harnessing the potential of main-chain dipoles in polymers: New frontiers for physical organic chemistry
Abstract:
The core of physical organic chemistry is the relation of an organic (macro)molecule’s chemical structure to its reactivity/properties. This simple concept is a powerful tool to understand fundamental mechanisms, solve problems, improve sustainability, and establish design principles across a wide variety of fields. The Lamb group takes a physical organic approach to problems at the interface of polymer science and catalysis to transform how materials are made and un-made. Much of our work has been on polyoxazolidinones (POxa), which are an emerging polyurethane subclass for high-performance thermoplastic/electronic applications that have high thermal stability due to the five-membered heterocycles incorporated into the polymer backbone. We address many synthetic limitations of POxa and systematically investigate their structure-property relationships, particularly the effect of the strong, oriented Oxa dipole on material properties.
Bio:
Jessica Lamb is an Assistant Professor and McKnight Land-Grant Professor at the University of Minnesota, where her group has worked at the interface of physical organic, catalysis, and polymer chemistry since 2020. Their current research interests include studying polymers with non-ionic dipoles in the backbone, understanding N-heterocyclic carbene adducts for catalysis and energy applications, and combining disparate mechanisms of polymerization to access novel block copolymers. Jessica is the recipient of the AAAS Marion Milligan Mason Award (2025), the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award (2022), the ACS Division of Professional Relations (PROF) Leadership Development Award (2022), was an ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Young Investigator, and was a finalist for the Hanwha Total-IUPAC Young Polymer Scientist Award (2022). Before starting her independent career, Jessica was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at MIT with Prof. Jeremiah Johnson, an NSF graduate research fellow at Cornell University with Prof. Geoffrey Coates (PhD 2017), and graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Chemistry from the University of North Dakota (2012).
Keywords: Organic chemistry, polymer chemistry
Host: Prof. AJ Boydston