Check the highlights from our recent participation at ACS Spring 2025 in San Diego featuring a special reunion of our group members past and present. Four of our distinguished alumni/alumna—Chunhong, Sehoon, Hyunhyub and Srikanth—came together to organize and host the symposium “Bionic Intelligent Polymeric Materials” in the PMSE Division, bringing together recent advances in the field of smart polymers and bio-inspired structures. Current group member Jisoo, Yiming and Laura Mae attended and presented their recent work both in oral and post presentations in various sessions.

Adding to the excitement, former lab members Evi and current member Valeriia also joined the event—making this a perfect moment for a group photo capturing this wonderful past-and-present reunion!

Prof. Vladimir Tsukruk and SEMA members Dr. Valeriia Poliukhova, Dr. Jisoo Jeon and Frank Huang visited NCSU for collaborative NSF-funded project “Organizer Nanochannel Materials from Biomolecular Magnetic Organic Frameworks”. A big thank you to Prof. Orlin Velev and Prof. Yaroslava Yingling for hosting us in North Carolina State University! 

Valeriia Poliukhova, a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech, captured this photo using bright-field optical microscopy on MXene nanosheets embedded in a natural polymer. Read more about this photo: Chemistry in Pictures: Under the Sea

Chemistry in Pictures: Under the Sea

In December, SEMA members attended the MRS Fall 2024 in Boston to showcase their research.

Congratulation to Dr. Woosung Choi for his successful Ph.D. thesis defense in 2024!

Dr. Valeriia Poliukhova, postdoc in the SEMA group, organized the WCC Luncheon at the Southeast Regional Meeting of ACS (SERMACS) 2024.

Congratulations to Dr. Daria Bukharina for her successful PhD thesis defense and also to Botyo Dimitrov for his successful master thesis defense in Spring 2024! Wish them all the best in their future careers!

During 2024 ACS Spring Meeting in New Orleans, LA, SEMA member Dasha and Botyo were selected to do their oral and poster presentations while group reunion were happening there with our previous group member Dr. Chunhong Ye, now assistant professor at Shanghai Tech University.

Left to right: Dasha, Prof. Tsukruk, and Prof. Chunhong Ye from Shanghai Tech

The kick-off meeting, hosted on Mar. 14th, marked the inception of our collaborative project titled ‘Organized Nanochannel Materials from Biomolecular Magnetic Organic Frameworks‘. Thanks to Professors Yaroslava G. Yingling and Orlin D. Velev from North Carolina State University (NCSU) for joining this exciting journey into the realms of nanotechnology and biomolecular engineering.