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
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
Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering
Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award
Unilever Award, ACS Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry
Army Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
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