Original article by By Molly Colgate, Assistant Editor, RSC.
2025 Polymer Chemistry Lectureship awarded to Professor Frank Leibfarth
We are delighted to announce Professor Frank Leibfarth (University of North Carolina, USA) as the recipient of the 2025 Polymer Chemistry lectureship!
This award, now in its eleventh year, honours an early-career researcher who has made significant contribution to the polymer chemistry field. The recipient is selected by the Polymer Chemistry Editorial Board from a list of candidates nominated by the community.
Frank Leibfarth attended the University of South Dakota, where he was a Goldwater Scholar and graduated in 2008 with degrees in Chemistry and Physics. In that same year, he began a Ph.D. program in chemistry at the University of California Santa Barbara under the direction of Professor Craig J. Hawker. In 2013, Frank began his postdoctoral studies at MIT under the direction of Professor Timothy F. Jamison as an NSF Fellow. He began his independent career in 2016 at the University of North Carolina, where he is an Associate Professor in the Chemistry Department. The overarching goal of the Leibfarth group is to develop synthetic methods that transform readily available starting materials into functional and sustainable thermoplastics with molecular-level precision.
To accomplish these goals, his group leverages polymer chemistry, organic chemistry, and continuous flow chemistry to provide potentially useful solutions to challenges in sustainability and human health. The work of Professor Leibfarth’s group has been recognized by the Beckman Young Investigator award, the Popular Science Brilliant Ten recognition, the Presidential Early Career Award in Science & Engineering, and the Sloan Research Fellowship, among others. At UNC, Prof. Leibfarth has been recognized by the Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and as the Winter 2021 commencement speaker.
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