Lauren Zarzar

Professional Appointments and Affiliations

Professor of Chemistry

Office 

436 Chemistry Building
University Park, PA 16802

Mailing Address

104 Chemistry Building

Education

B.A. in Chemistry, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

B.S. in Economics, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Ph.D. in Chemistry, Harvard University

Postdoctoral Associate, MIT

Honors and Awards

Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

Simons Foundation Pivot Fellowship

Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award

Penn State Eberly College of Science Distinguished Mentoring Award

Marion Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences

Sloan Research Fellowship

Chemical and Engineering News Talented 12

Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering

Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award

Unilever Award, ACS Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry

3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award

Gladys Snyder Award

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

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