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Adrian Figg

Assistant Professor
313E Davidson Hall
figg@vt.edu

Research Interests

The Figg Group develops ways to make new, defined polymer structures that are inspired by the precision of biology but have broader applications in studying diseases and addressing plastics recycling. We push the limits of synthetic controlled polymerization techniques to access structures that can be programmed for nearly any application, such as restoring function to un-functional proteins, designing better protein-polymer therapeutics, or embedding tunable chemical sites for new routes to recycle or deconstruct plastics.

  1. Figg, C. A.; Winegar, P. H.; Hayes, O. G.; Mirkin, C. A. Controlling the DNA Hybridization Chain Reaction. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2020, 142, 8596-8601. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.0c02892
  2. Figg, C. A.; Hickman, J. D.; Scheutz, G. M.; Shanmugam, S.; Carmean, R. N.; Tucker, B. S.; Boyer, C.; Sumerlin, B. S. Color-Coding Visible Light Polymerizations to Elucidate the Activation of Trithiocarbonates using Eosin Y. Macromolecules 2018, 51, 1370-1376. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.macromol.7b02533
  3. Figg, C. A.; Carmean, R. N.; Bentz, K. C.; Mukherjee, S.; Savin, D. A.; Sumerlin, B. S. Tuning Hydrophobicity to Program Block Copolymer Assemblies from the Inside Out. Macromolecules 2017, 50, 935-943. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.macromol.6b02754
  4. Figg, C. A.; Simula, A.; Gebre, K. A.; Tucker, B. S.; Haddleton, D. M.; Sumerlin, B. S. Polymerization-Induced Thermal Self-Assembly (PITSA). Chem. Sci. 2015, 6, 1230-1236. https://pubs.rsc.org/am/content/articlehtml/2015/sc/c4sc03334e
  • Weinberg Family Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2020
  • ACS PMSE Division Future Faculty Scholar, 2019
  • International Institute for Nanotechnology Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2018
  • Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Science TL1 Postdoctoral Training Fellowship, 2018
  • George and Josephine Butler Polymer Research Award, 2017
  • M. A. Battiste Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, 2016
  • B.A. in Chemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2013
  • Ph.D. in Chemistry, University of Florida, 2018
  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Northwestern University, 2018-2021

Research Areas

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