Plastics are ubiquitous materials in every sector of modern society due to their versatility, light-weight, diverse and tunable properties, and often low cost. In this talk, Yan Xia will present several unusual types of plastics developed in my lab at Stanford, including degradable polymers that could replace the environmentally-persistent plastics, molecular-sieving membranes for energy efficient chemical separations, and mechanically responsive polymers that sense, respond, and transform under stress.

Yan is an Associate Professor in the Chemistry Department at Stanford University. He grew up in Beijing, and received his BS from Peking University, MS from McMaster University, and PhD from Caltech, and joined Stanford’s faculty in 2013. His research interest lies in the design, synthesis, and manipulation of organic materials and polymers, driven by rational molecular design and curiosity. He is a recipient of Army Research Office Young Investigator Award, 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, NSF CAREER Award, Cottrell Scholar Award, and Sloan Research Fellowship.

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