Plenary Session

The Plenary Session for the 2003 MRS Spring Meeting featured a presentation by David A. Tirrell, California Institute of Technology, as well as the presentation of the Outstanding Young Investigator and Graduate Student Awards.

David A. Tirrell
California Institute of Technology

Talk Presentation
Opportunities at the Materials-Biology Interface

This lecture examined scientific and technological opportunities that are characterized by close coupling between materials science and the biological sciences. Issues addressed include medical devices, array technologies for genomic and proteomic studies, microfluidic systems, and biological approaches to materials synthesis, selection and evolution.

David A. Tirrell is the Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor and Chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. After earning a BS in Chemistry at MIT, Tirrell enrolled in the newly created Department of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts where he worked in the laboratory of Otto Vogl on the synthesis and polymerization of vinyl derivatives of salicyclic acid and 2,4-dihydroxybenzophenone. He was awarded a PhD in 1978. During a four-month stay with Takeo Saegusa at Kyoto University, Tirrell developed methods for the synthesis of ionomers based on polymers of ethyl glycidate. He then accepted an assistant professorship in the Department of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University where he established research programs directed toward the exploration of neighboring group effects in polymer modification reactions, and toward elucidation of mechanistic questions in radical copolymerization processes.

Tirrell returned to Amherst in 1984. He was promoted to Professor in 1987, appointed Director of the Materials Research Laboratory in 1991, and named Barrett Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering in 1992. Tirrell moved to Caltech in 1998. He has served as Visiting Professor at the University of Queensland (1987), at the Institut Charles Sadron in Strasbourg (1991), at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1995), and at the Institut Curie in Paris. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and of the Division of Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering of the American Chemical Society. He was Editor of the Journal of Polymer Science, Part A: Polymer Chemistry from 1988 until 1999, and has served on the editorial boards of many other journals, including Macromolecules, Biopolymers, Accounts of Chemical Research, and Chemical and Engineering News. He chaired the 1994 Gordon Research Conference on Polymers in Biosystems and the 1995 Gordon Conference on Chemistry of Supramolecules and Assemblies.

Tirrell's contributions to teaching and research have been recognized in a variety of ways. He was named Outstanding Teacher in the College of Science at Carnegie Mellon and a Sloan Fellow in 1982. He was a Presidential Young Investigator Awardee of the National Science Foundation in 1984 and a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 1987. In 1991, he was recognized by the Carl S. Marvel Creative Polymer Chemistry Award of the American Chemical Society; in 1996 he received the Harrison Howe Award of the Rochester Section of the ACS; and in 1997 he was awarded the Chancellor's Medal of the University of Massachusetts. In 2001, he received the American Chemical Society Award in Polymer Chemistry and the degree of Doctor honoris causa from the Technical University of Eindhoven.

Tirrell's most important contributions to chemistry have come in three areas: 1) radical copolymerization mechanism, 2) biomimetic membrane chemistry, and 3) development of molecular biological approaches to new polymeric materials.