NorCal Chemical Engineering Excellence Award
Award Recipient: Dr. Andrew Spakowitz, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University
Dr. Andrew Spakowitz has been nominated for this award by Professor Chaitan Khosla, Past Chairman of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. This award is in recognition of his exceptional contributions to academic research at Stanford University.
Andrew Spakowitz has been engaged in projects that address fundamental chemical and physical processes underlying a range of cutting-edge material applications and biological mysteries. His research draws from a diverse range of theoretical and computational methods from condensed-matter and polymer physics to address problems that expand the boundaries of engineering science, resulting in major advances in DNA biophysics, protein self assembly, and charge transport in semiconducting polymers.
More specifically, Spakowitz has exploited recent progress in modeling semi-flexible polymers to develop a systematic method for simulating genomic lengths of DNA at time scales that are relevant to major biological processes. Using this approach, he has revealed the mechanisms responsible for the packaging, reorganization, and segregation of chromosomal DNA within a nucleus and a bacterium, demonstrating how fundamental physical models can address critical problems in the life sciences. Separately, he has made a major advancement in modeling conducting polymers by establishing the first model that captures the role of polymer conformation in charge transport. This new model provides the key to establishing the connection between structural morphology and material performance, an essential step in expanding the use of semiconducting polymers in electronic and optical materials applications.