Professor Charles E. Sing has been awarded the 2024 John H. Dillon Medal by the American Physical Society. Established in 1983, the award is given annually in recognition of outstanding research accomplishments by early-career polymer physicists who have demonstrated exceptional research promise. Sing was recognized for "pioneering advances in polyelectrolyte phase behavior and polymer dynamics using theory and computational modeling."
Sing joined the faculty of the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2014, where he uses theoretical and computational tools to tackle fundamental problems in polymer physics and develop design principles for bio-inspired soft materials. His research group integrates statistical mechanical theory and coarse-grained models to understand a wide range of polymer physical phenomena, including the molecular and sequence properties of polyelectrolyte solutions, the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of semidilute polymer solutions, the structure and assembly of polymers with nonlinear architectures, and charge and penetrant transport in polymers solutions and networks. These efforts feature close collaboration with experimentalists, including many faculty at Illinois in the ChBE and Materials Science & Engineering departments.
Upon learning of his award, Sing highlighted the critical role his students have played.
“This is a testament to the hard and creative work of students and postdocs on my team over the past several years, and I am excited that their impact and insights are being recognized," Sing said.
Sing earned a B.S.E. (2008) and M.S. (2009) from Case Western Reserve University, Ph.D. (2012) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and completed his postdoctoral work at Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology (2012-2014). He has received several honors for his research and teaching, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2017), School of Chemical Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award (2017-2018), and inclusion on the American Institute of Chemical Engineering’s 35 Under 35 list.
In addition to teaching and research, Sing serves as the Director of Graduate Studies at ChBE.