Scientific Vision

Mission: Our group aims at developing a better understanding in several areas of polymer physics and engineering, with an emphasis on dynamics, diffusion, and rheology, related to flow, processing and mechanical properties of polymeric materials. For a brief overview look here.

Philosophy: Current research activities intend to gain new knowledge and understanding in polymer science and engineering by an integrated and coherent interaction of theoretical ideas and experimental discoveries. Often the activities are experimentally based, driven by both industrial relevance and theoretical perception.

Scientific Methods: Our intuition and theoretical insights guide us in pursuing important and interesting scientific research. We are not limited to a particular experimental technique and choose whatever necessary tools to answer questions of fundamental significance. These methods may include chemical synthesis (in collaboration with others) motivated by physics, innovative rheological techniques such as particle-tracking velocimetry, flow birefringence and rheo-spectroscopic techniques, theoretical modeling including computer simulations (in collaboration with others).

Scientific and Educational Objectives: Our scientific goal, to either extend the boundary of the current knowledge or to rebuild foundational new knowledge using scientific methods outlined in the preceding paragraph, enhances the educational objectives, which are to train the next generation of scientists who would know how to formulate questions, identify and analyze problems, and develop solutions to advance knowledge in polymer science and engineering.