Karen L. Wooley

Known for approaches to the design and construction of functional polymer materials. Fundamental advances toward synthetic methodologies include the use of natural products as building blocks and routes that lead simply to elegant, yet complex structures. Key leader in the evolution of polymer chemistry towards nanostructured materials. Among the first to recognize the potential impact of a process involving thermodynamically-driven, self-assembly of block copolymers in solution, followed by regiochemical covalent crosslinking within specific regions of the assemblies, to prepare robust functional nanostructures. She introduced an approach to shell-crosslinked nanocapsules and nanocages, which offers great promise in a variety of technological applications, with her materials currently undergoing trials for both the detection and treatment of cancer, as well as the treatment of infectious diseases. She created a world of interesting and unique hierarchical assemblies of differentially-shaped nanoscopic macromolecules and developed novel strategies that involve iterative covalent and supramolecular transformations to prepare nanostructures of controlled sizes and shapes. Her targets are practical materials including anti-biofouling coatings, photoresists for microelectronics fabrication, magnetically-responsive nanoparticles for clean-up of oil spills, PFOA and other environmental pollutants, and degradable nanoparticles for disease treatment.