Lauren Zarzar

Professional Appointments and Affiliations

Associate Professor of Chemistry

Office 

436 Chemistry Building
University Park, PA 16802

Mailing Address

104 Chemistry Building

Education

B.A. in Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania

B.S. in Economics, University of Pennsylvania

Ph.D. in Chemistry, Harvard University

Postdoctoral Associate, MIT

Honors and Awards

Army Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

Army Research Office Young Investigator Program Award

3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award

Gladys Snyder Award

Virginia S. and Philip L. Walker, Jr. Faculty Fellowship

NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute Fellowship

National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

American Chemical Society AkzoNobel Student Award in Applied Polymer Science

Research

Dynamic materials that sense and adapt to their surroundings are primed to be integral components of future technologies. Such systems often require precise chemo-mechanical coordination between multiple materials working cooperatively in order to achieve the proper functionality. Therefore, in addition to the exploration of novel mechanisms coupling these chemical and mechanical cues, it will also be critical to develop prototyping approaches that facilitate the integration of a myriad of materials, especially at nano and micrometer length scales. In the Zarzar Lab, we explore a multitude of platforms including both hard and soft materials. For example, we study: direct laser writing of polymers, metals, and oxides for 2D and 3D nano/microscale patterning; dynamically reconfigurable soft materials, such as emulsions and polymers, with functions such as tunable lenses, sensors, and triggered release.

Selected Publications

Google Scholar Page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=F8XWtzEAAAAJ&hl=en