Yoan Simon
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, AZ·Materials Science·Early-career
Living cells decide what gets in and out through pores in their membranes, built from proteins that open and close in response to conditions outside. That gatekeeping is what lets a cell sense its environment and react.
- Fields
Materials Science
Chemistry
- Topics
bottlebrush polymers
polymersomes
block copolymers
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Evaluate how the structure of amphiphilic triblock copolymers — stiffness, side-chain length, and interdigitation between opposing chains — governs their behavior in polymer membranes.
- Determine the rules governing co-assembly of linear and core-shell bottlebrush amphiphilic block copolymers, using control over persistence length, grafting length, and grafting density.
- Build multiresponsive polymersomes by incorporating pore-forming bottlebrush triblocks into vesicle membranes and test gating in response to pH, light, and mechanical force.
More about the research
This project asks whether synthetic materials can do the same thing: can a purely polymer-based vesicle be given pores that open on cue, in response to pressure, light, or acidity?
Why it matters
Materials that release cargo only when a specific trigger arrives would be useful for targeted drug delivery, where a carrier must stay sealed in circulation and open at the target. The same gated-pore chemistry could underpin sensors that respond to touch, light, or odor-like chemical cues, and active filtration membranes for high-value separations.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Joe Patterson
University of California-Irvine, CA·Chemistry·Early-career
Make a library of multiphase amphiphilic block copolymers and map how their phase behavior depends on polymer structure and solution conditions, using electron microscopy, optical microscopy and X-ray scattering.
Ying Yang
University of Nevada-Reno, NV·Chemistry·Early-career
Work out how initiators and catalysts control the ring-opening polymerization of dithioacetal macrocycles (sulfur-containing ring molecules), with the goal of achieving controlled "living" cationic polymerization.
Dominik Konkolewicz
Miami University-Oxford, OH·Chemistry
Synthesize a new class of polymers using controlled polymerization to tune chain length, charge and hydrophobicity, and test which designs self-assemble with lipids into well-defined discs tens of nanometers across.
The school
Arizona State University Campus Immersion: 36 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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