During the Graduate Student Speaker Series talk on April 20, Stephen Frayne, a PhD candidate in chemistry, spoke on “Designing Dendritic Polymers: From Theory to Experiment.” Study and application of polymeric materials spans the physical, life, and applied sciences and has revolutionized nearly every facet of modern day society: medicine, transportation, construction, agriculture, and electronics, to name a few.
Frayne explained how dendrimers, a structurally unique class of polymers, have attracted a significant amount of attention for their potential biomedical applications; however, the widespread utility of dendrimers has been hindered by their difficult and time-consuming syntheses. With the goal of developing novel strategies for the preparation of dendrimers, Frayne is using computational and experimental techniques to address the synthetic challenges associated with dendrimers and other macromolecules. Frayne’s advisor is Brian Northrop, associate professor of chemistry.Many Wesleyan students, graduate students, faculty and Wesleyan President Michael Roth attended Frayne’s talk. (Photos by Rebecca Goldfarb Terry ’19)
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