Chemistry Pryde Lecturer: Dr. Evelyn Auyeung '09; Associate Research Scientist at The Dow Chemical Company

Dr. Auyeung was one of 30 young scientists highlighted at the "2013 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: 30 under 30: Probing Structures at the Nanoscale." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/2013-lindau-evelyn-auyeung/

Seminar Title: "Advanced Materials through Catalysis: Polyolefins R&D as an Industrial Chemist"
Abstract: Catalyst innovations in the polyolefins industry have given rise to tailor-made polymers for applications spanning food packaging, automobiles, adhesives, solar cells, health and hygiene, and many more. The role of a chemist in Dow’s Packaging and Specialty Plastics business is to enable the production of a diverse portfolio of polyolefins (e.g. high density polyethylene, elastomers, rubbers) through the design and synthesis of catalysts where the molecular structure of the catalysts determines the polymer attributes, such as molecular weight and density, which in turn determines the product performance. Olefin block copolymers (OBCs) represent a class of specialty polyolefins with alternating high and low density segments whereby this unique microstructure imparts performance advantages for a wide variety of end-use applications. In this talk, I will first introduce Dow’s breakthrough chain-shuttling catalyst technology for the commercial production of OBCs. I will then discuss my work on recent advances on this OBC platform to extend the concept to new monomers. In addition to targeting materials exhibiting high performance and new markets, sustainability in industrial polyolefins research will also be discussed.