Abstract
Marine organisms use organic building blocks in unique ways to achieve materials with exceptional properties. With inspiration from these natural systems, the design of synthetic building blocks to mimic these capabilities and extend them to common polymeric materials will be described.

About the Speaker
Craig J. Hawker, FRS is the Clarke Professor and holds the Alan and Ruth Heeger Chair of Interdisciplinary Science at the University of California in Santa Barbara, where he directs the California Nanosystems Institute and the Dow Materials Institute. Hawker came to UCSB in 2004 after eleven years as a Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA.

Hawker’s research activities focus on synthetic polymer chemistry and nanotechnology, integrating fundamental studies with the development of nanostructured materials for advanced properties and functions in microelectronics and biotechnology. This work has led to over 500 peer-reviewed papers and 70 patents with a number of materials being commercialized. He has helped establish a range of start-up companies — Relypsa, Intermolecular, Olaplex, Tricida and has been elected to the National Academy of Inventors. For his pioneering studies, Hawker’s recent honors include the 2017 Charles G. Overberger International Prize for Excellence in Polymer Research, the 2016 Belgian Polymer Award, the 2013 American Chemical Society Award in Polymer Chemistry, the 2012 Centenary Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry and an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society in 2011. Hawker was honored with election to the Royal Society in 2010.

A reception will follow the lecture.