Seminar abstract:

Research in the Romero Polymer Lab focuses on the development of novel methodologies for precision synthesis and functionalization of polymeric materials, seeking to address longstanding challenges in stimuli-responsive materials, optoelectronically active polymers, and polymer sustainability. Our efforts utilize a variety of synthetic tools to achieve molecular-level control over polymer structure and properties, with a particular emphasis on photochemistry, electrochemistry, and main group chemistry. This seminar will highlight recent advances from my group, including our work on Frustrated Lewis Pair (FLP) polymers as photochemically active and catalytic materials, electrochemical functionalization of commodity polymers, and the synthesis and characterization of novel non-fluorocarbon fluoropolymers.

Speaker Bio:

Nathan Romero joined the Department of Chemistry at UC San Diego as an Assistant Professor in 2020. Nate grew up in Grand Rapids, MI and attended Calvin College, receiving a B.S. in chemistry in 2012. He received a PhD in 2017 from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, where he studied photoredox catalysis under Prof. Dave Nicewicz as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Nate carried out postdoctoral research as a NIH Fellow in the lab of Prof. Tim Swager at MIT from 2017 to 2020. The Romero Polymer Lab at UCSD merges synthetic methodology, inorganic and main group chemistry, and polymer science.