NanoEngineering
Professor
Professor Lipomi's research interests include organic electronics; mechanically robust photovoltaics; optical and electronic nanostructures; plasmonic and electronic methods of mechanical sensing; engineering and synthesis of complex molecular architectures to achieve new macroscopic functionality; mechanical biosensors; materials and devices for haptic interfaces and for understanding the tactile sense.
Bio
Darren Lipomi earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a minor in physics as a Beckman Scholar at Boston University in 2005. He earned his PhD in chemistry at Harvard University in 2010, with Prof. George M. Whitesides, where he was supported by a fellowship from the ACS Organic Division. From 2010 – 2012, he was an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Zhenan Bao at Stanford University. He is now a Professor in the Department of NanoEngineering and Program in Chemical Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. His research interests include the chemistry of organic materials, especially the mechanical properties of pi-conjugated polymers for flexible solar cells, biomechanical sensors, and phenomena that occur at the intersection of materials chemistry with human perception and cognition. He is the recipient of the NSF BRIGE award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Program award, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and the NSF BRITE award. He hosts a podcast, “Molecular Podcasting with Darren Lipomi” and associated YouTube channel (Darren_Lipomi) that together have >12,000 subscribers.