Jeffrey Pyun

Talk: Controlling the interaction of light with polymers: Next generation plastics optics for infrared imaging and photonics

Professor Jeffrey Pyun is currently a Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and a Professor in the Wyant College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona.

He is currently working on materials that are anticipated to broadly impact the areas of optical polymeric materials, photonics, sustainable polymer chemistry, sulfur utilization, photocatalysis-solar fuels and energy storage technologies. In 2002, he obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry with Prof. Krzysztof Matyjaszewski at Carnegie Mellon University working in the area of controlled radical polymerization applied to the synthesis of organic/inorganic hybrid materials. He then moved on to postdoctoral research in a joint position with Prof. Jean M.J. Fréchet and Prof. Craig J. Hawker at the IBM Almaden Research Center from 2002-2004 focusing on the synthesis of complex macromolecular  architectures for catalysis.  Since 2009, he has also served as a World Class University Professor and Adjunct Professor, in the School of Chemical & Biological Engineering at Seoul National University.  Prof. Pyun’s research contributions have been recognized by a number of prestigious awards for young investigators, namely, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2007), the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2007), the IBM Faculty Award (2007), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship (2009) and for important contributions to the magnetic tape industry thru the Information Storage Industry Consortium (INSIC) Technical Achievement Award (2009).  He has also been recognized by the University of Arizona with the Innovation and Impact Award from Tech Launch Arizona and was named the Academic Innovator of the Year in 2017 from the State of Arizona. He was also appointed as a Kavli Fellow (2011), an American Chemical Society PMSE Fellow (2019), admitted into the National Academy of Inventors (2019) and named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2021).  Prof. Pyun was recently named the first recipient of the University Distinguished Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award from the University of Arizona (2022).  Prof. Pyun is also an Adjunct Professor to the faculty at Pusan National University in the Department of Chemistry and a Visiting Professor and Adjunct Professor at Korea University in the Department of Chemical Engineering since 2020.