Kuenstler receives NSF CAREER award

Assistant professor Alexa Kuenstler has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award to further her work in responsive polymeric systems. Kuenstler’s project, Connecting Microscopic Rearrangements to Macroscopic Flow in Dynamic Covalent Networks, will focus on understanding and designing new polymer materials that can be easily reshaped during manufacturing while remaining strong and durable.

Many high-performance materials used in advanced manufacturing, composites, biomedicine and other areas are built from long molecular chains linked together into networks. These networks have high mechanical strength but are often difficult and expensive to process in energy- and cost-efficient ways, limiting their manufacture and use.

One promising solution is to use “dynamic bonds,” special chemical connections that can be made to temporarily rearrange on the molecular level – allowing the material to flow or be reshaped – while still remaining strong during everyday use. Kuenstler aims to better understand how these dynamic bonds work and how their behavior influences the overall performance of a material. By developing new tools and characterization methods to make and measure these networks, the project will inform the design of next‑generation materials that are easy to manufacture and deploy without compromising mechanical strength.

“I’m honored to be recognized with a CAREER Award, which is a testament to the hard work and creativity of the team I’m fortunate to work with in my lab,” Kuenstler said. “This funding will help support our work in understanding the molecular underpinnings of emergent time-dependent properties in these materials. We expect the fundamentals uncovered through this work will lead to advances in materials for advanced manufacturing, energy applications and consumer products. Additionally, this award will allow us to expand educational opportunities in polymer science within the department and the greater Champaign-Urbana community, which is critical to our efforts to help train the next-generation of polymer scientists and chemical engineers.”

Kuenstler has been on the chemical and biomolecular engineering faculty at Illinois since 2023, where she is a Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors (LEAP) Scholar. Her research group, the Kuenstler Lab, focuses on research that lies at the interface of materials chemistry, polymer physics and additive manufacturing to address needs in energy, sustainability and human health.

CAREER awards, administered under the Faculty Early Career Development Program, are the NSF’s most prestigious form of support and recognition for junior faculty who “have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.”