Younjin Min wins Polymer Processing Society Early Career Award

Younjin Min, assistant professor in the Department of Polymer Engineering, will receive the 2016 PPS Early Career Award from The Polymer Processing Society. This award recognizes productivity of early career researchers in the field of polymer processing as judged from the publications, patents, and service to the Polymer Processing Society. Nominees include tenured/tenure-track faculty members, post-doctoral researchers, and researchers working in industry or national laboratories within 6 years of receiving their Ph.D. degree at the time of nomination.

Dr. Min will receive this award in Lyon, France during the 32nd International Conference of The Polymer Processing Society. The PPS Early Career Award was established in 2015 from the proceeds of PPS-30, the 30th International Conference of The Polymer Processing Society held in Cleveland, Ohio in 2014. More information about the PPS Early Career Award can be found here.

Dr. Min obtained her PhD degree at the University of California at Santa Barbara and postdoctoral degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She joined the Department of Polymer Engineering in December 2012. She is also a recipient of other prestigious awards such as the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) Scholarship and the Schlinger Scholarship for Excellence in Chemical Engineering Research, and American Chemical Society ACS PRF- Doctoral New Investigator Award.

The overarching aim of her current research is to obtain a fundamental understanding of soft materials at the molecular level, with a specific goal of utilizing such knowledge to advance nanotechnology and biotechnology through rational design and processing. One of her current research projects deals with nanorheology and associated-intermolecular interactions that are of both fundamental and practical importance in areas of such as friction and lubrication, flow of multicomponent systems (e.g. polymer blends and nanocomposite materials), and polymer processing operations. Another focus of her lab is on biopolymer process engineering to derive and/or modify natural resources such as silk and mussel protein polymers. Through this approach, her group has developed novel functional materials such as shear-thickening materials, transparent polymeric films, implantable polymer microneedles, and electrospun core-shell fibers that are important in the health-care related, structural, and optical applications.

Her research has culminated in 25 published journal articles, including top journals such as Nature Materials (two articles), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (two articles), and Nano Letters. So far, these publications have been very impactful, receiving over 1,600 citations with h-index of 15. To learn more about her research, visit the MIN Research Laboratory.