University of Massachusetts Amherst

Polymer Science and Engineering

Tew Research Group – News

Awards

  • Greg Tew, along with Prof. Michael A. Hickner of Penn State, were mentioned in an article entitled "Ionic Membranes Go Metallic" in Chemical & Engineering News (Vol 90, Issue 12; March 19, 2012; p. 11; News of the Week) for their work on cross-linked metal ionomers used in fuel-cell applications.  Read the article here.
  • July 2011: Greg receives his full Professorship at UMass. Congrats!
  • 2011: Greg is accepted as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Polymer Competence Center, Leoben GmbH (PCCL).
  • 2011: Greg becomes a member of Faculty 1000, Macromolecular Chemistry Section.
  • 2010: Greg becomes the American Chemical Society's Division of Polymer Chemistry's Polymer Division Fellow.
  • Jan 2010: Greg is selected to become a member of the Defense Sciences Study Group of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded research and development centers to provide objective analyses of national security issues, particularly those requiring scientific and technical expertise, and conduct related research on other national challenges.

  • Aug 2007: Pictured at left: Greg receives the American Chemical Society Division of Polymer Chemistry 2007 Herman F. Mark Young Scholar Award from Division Chair James Moore at the 234th ACS National Meeting and Exposition in Boston, MA.
  • Greg receives the Samsung-IUPAC Young Polymer Scientist Award. Click here.

Diversity

  • Greg serves as Co-Organizer of the 3rd Future Faculty Workshop: Diverse Faculty of Tomorrow, along with Professor Rick McCullough fromCarnegie-Mellon, and Professor Tim Swager, MIT.  To see photos of the workshop click here.

Funding

  • May 2010: Pentagon-funded research by Greg Tew and biotech firm Polymedix, Inc. are making strides in the development of antibiotics that can be used to treat infections such as staph and the insidious Acinetobacter (or "Iraqibacter" as it has come to be known in war-zone medical facilities). Click here to read the wired.com article
  • 2009: Greg has been approved to receive over $6 million dollars over five year's time in federal grant funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH) for his collaborative project, "Antimicrobial Oligomers for BioDefense and Emerging Foodborne Infectious Diseases." 
  • Aug 2009: Greg's work with magnetic polymers, which he presented at the 238th Fall ACS National Meeting in Washington, DC, is featured in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). Click here to read the article in C&EN.
  • May 2009: Greg receives $100k in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Explorations Challenge for his proposal "Capturing Nature's Weapons to Prevent Infectious Diseases."  Click here for the Gates Foundation announcement.; Click here for the UMass In The Loop announcement.

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Travel

  • Jan 2011: Greg spent six months on sabbatical        working in the lab of Prof. Harm-Anton Klok at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.
  • Dec 2008: Greg recently traveled to Eindhoven University of Technology Polymer Labs in The Netherlands to participate as a member of the Dissertation Committee for grad student Christina Ott.

 

Visitors

  • Jan 2011: Fede returns to UMass after successfully defending her Ph.D. in Italy and re-joins the Tew Group as a Post-Doc.
  • Sep 2009: The Tew Group will host Italian graduate student Federica Sgolastra for one year in their lab.  Fede comes to us from the Polytechnic University of Marche, in Ancona, Italy.  Her research             involves the study of non-proteinogenic aminoacids.
  • Feb 2009: Grad Student Semra Colak gives an overview of Polymer Science to             10 year old Clarisse, a budding scientist visiting the Tew Research Lab after getting 100 on her science test!

 

Group Member Accolades

  • Dec 2011: Brittany de Ronde was selected to participate as a trainee in the Chemistry-Biology Interface (CBI) Interface Training Program funded by the National Institute of Health.
  • Jul 2010: Semra Colak has been selected to present her paper "Novel Dually Functional Zwitterionic Polymers" at the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry (DOC) Graduate Research Symposium, Boston College, MA.
  • Jul 2010: Michael Lis has been selected as a recipient of a two year ICE/IGERT Fellowship.
  • Jun 2009: Post-doctoral researcher Dr. Karen Lienkamp has been selected as a 2009 Award Recipient of the King Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship Program with funding provided by the Ludcke Foundation, a philanthropic organization that supports medicine, education and human services, for her project entitled "Nanotechnology for the Fight Against Multiple Resistant Bacteria: Self-cleaning, Cell-selective Antibacterial Surfaces for Medical Devices." Karen is mentored by Prof. Maria Santore for this project.
  • Jun 2009: Grad student Semra Colak won "BEST POSTER" at the 2009 Polymers Gordon Research Seminar with the title "ROMP-based Zwitterionic Polymers Carrying Dual Functionality."
  • Feb 2009: Ticora V. Jones (Ph.D. 2008) was awarded the Materials Societies Congressional Fellowship and has recently accepted a position in the office of Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI). Click here to read the announcement.
  • Jul 2008: Jeffrey Dabkowski (MS, Microbiology 2008), under the guidance of Greg Tew and Klaus Nüsslein (Microbiology) garnered attention for his work on host defense peptides as they relate to medical-device related infections. 

Click here to read the article from the online blog medtechinsider

Click here to read the article on MedicalDeviceLink.com

Jeff will begin the Physician Assistant Program at Northeastern University in the fall of 2009. 

  • Jan 2008: Former Tew Group member Ticora V. Jones, currently a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, participated on a "Women in Science" panel as part of the dedication ceremony of the new "green" Natural Sciences Building at Mills College, a private women's college in Oakland, CA. Click here to read the article in the Mills Quarterly.

Covers

 

Antimicrobial Polymers

 

 

 

 

 

 

Office of Naval Research

  • Feb 2003: ONR Announces 26 Young Investigator Program Awards pdf

Conferences

Polymedix
http://www.pse.umass.edu