Bradley Olsen
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA·Materials Science
Plastics and other materials are hard to design with data, because results are scattered across papers and labs. This problem is especially acute for polymers, which are long-chain molecules that standard chemistry databases describe poorly.
- Fields
Materials Science
Chemistry
Engineering
- Topics
polymer informatics
cheminformatics
materials data
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2030
What they work on
- Extend the CRIPT polymer data platform into CRIMaC, a broader chemistry and materials data system, by expanding BigSMILES notation to biochemistry, simulation data and hybrid organic–inorganic materials.
- Develop interactive "graph as comment" data visualization using Vega-Lite, letting domain experts discuss shared data directly through graphical objects.
- Ensure the trustworthiness of user-contributed data with a four-part validation scheme: rule-based checks, transparent provenance, AI-driven outlier detection and crowdsourced validation.
- Synthesize poly(glycolic acid) with controlled architectures and use AI-guided design to propose related degradable polymers for oxygen-barrier packaging.
- Establish quantitative links between molecular structure, processing and properties of PGA-based materials, and use genetic algorithms to optimize multilayer flexible packaging for specific applications.
More about the research
The two projects connect data science with materials chemistry. One builds shared infrastructure for chemistry and materials data. The other applies data-driven design to a pressing problem: sustainable food packaging.
Why it matters
Single-use food packaging is a major source of plastic waste. Degradable, high-performance oxygen-barrier materials based on PGA could help replace current packaging while still protecting food. More broadly, a trustworthy shared data platform could help chemists and materials researchers find data faster and feed reliable data into AI, machine learning and automated experiments.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Brent Sumerlin
University of Florida, FL·Chemistry
Develop pendant squarate esters as a new catalyst-free bond-exchange chemistry for vitrimers, reshapable crosslinked polymers that flow when heated.
Aboulfazl Barati
Troy University, AL·Materials Science
Establish quantitative relationships between internal material architecture and water transport, swelling and mechanical stability in scaffold-confined soft polymer systems made from mixed recycled feedstocks.
James Sheehan
University of Alabama, AL·Materials Science
Measure and model how fast aliphatic and aromatic bio-derived solutes adsorb onto cellulose fibers during supercritical CO2 impregnation, using quartz crystal microbalance (QCM-D) measurements under varied process conditions.
The school
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 25 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 692 research doctorates a year.
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