November 2024: Jialiang successfully defended his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr.Zhang! Best wishes for your future career!
August 2024: Aniruddha Kulkarni joined the Foston lab as the intern student. Welcome!
August 2024: During the 2024 ACS Fall conference, Jerry presented a poster entitled “Synthesis of Biocompatible, Renewable Protein Nanocomposites Reinforced by Surface-modified Cellulose Nanocrystals”, and also gave a talk “Understanding Organosolv Poplar Lignin Depolymerization Mechanism by Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance-Mass Spectrometry (FTICR-MS)” in Denver, CO.
July 2024: Dr. Hanxun Jin joined the Foston lab as the postdoc researcher. Welcome!
July 2024: Our lab participated in the new BrightPath STEAM event and Jerry gave lab tours to K-12 young scholars. The kids had a blast!
July 2024: Morgan and Aditya successfully defended their PhD theses. Congratulations Dr.Li and Dr.Ponukumati! Best wishes for your future career!
May 2024: Professor Foston had a personal interview at Wiley Analytical Science magazine for the topic: Taking team science to plastic pollution. The interview talked about the $3.6 million, interdisciplinary center to develop nature-inspired alternatives to plastics for widespread application launched at Washington University in St Louis. Headed up by Professors Foston and Fuzhong Zhang from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington, ‘SMARC’ – Synthetic Biology Manufacturing of Advanced Materials Research Center – brings together experts in synthetic biology, machine learning, polymer science, material mechanics, and computational material simulation. This interdisciplinary team intends to develop new, high-performance, sustainably sourced, and biodegradable plastics that will be adopted by industry.
March 2024: Morgan presented a poster on the CEMB project entitled “Spatial Distribution of Glycosaminoglycans in Electrospun Gelatin-based Fibers” in the 2024 Mechanobiology Symposium and Retreat in Philadelphia, PA.
January 2024: Jialiang’s paper on lignin depolymerization using In Situ Small-Angle Neutron Scattering was published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. Congratulations, Jialiang! Also read more about our lignin projects here and our Biomass Conversion and In-situ Characterization projects here.
December 2023: Aditya submitted a paper “Deciphering Lignin Depolymerization: Catalyst and Solvent Influences on Product Diversity and Composition”. Also read more about our lignin projects here.
November 2023: During the 2023 AIChE National Meeting, Jialiang gave a talk “In-Situ Neutron Scattering of the Lignin Liquid-Phase Depolymerization with a Heterogeneous Catalyst” in Orlando, FL; during this meeting, Morgan also presented two posters entitled “Surface and Sub-Surface Analyses of Electrospun Gelatin and Gelatin-Chondroitin Sulfate Scaffolds for Biological Applications” and “Mechano-Chemical Analyses of Plant Cell Walls at Nanoscale Using Atomic Force Microscopy Coupled with Infrared Spectroscopy (AFM-IR)”, respectively.
October 2023: During the 2023 ACS MidWest & Great Lakes Regional Meeting, Jerry presented a poster entitled “Synthesis of Biocompatible, Renewable Protein Nanocomposites Reinforced by Surface-modified Cellulose Nanocrystals” in St. Louis, MO; Jialiang also gave a talk “In-Situ NMR of Lignin Model Polymer Catalytic Depolymerization” during the meeting in St. Louis, MO; Morgan gave a talk “Surface and Sub-surface Spatial Distribution Analysis of Native Glycosaminoglycans in Electrospun Gelatin-based Composites” in person in St. Louis, MO.
