Wondrous materials found in nature, and now synthesized in enormous quantity and variety, polymers find an ever-increasing use in manufactured products. Polymers are versatile because their properties are so wide-ranging, as is evident even in the conceptually simple polymers made from a single molecular species. The versatility becomes more profound in the copolymers made from multiple precursors, and the polymers compounded with filler materials. Research in polymers encompasses the chemical reactions of their formation, methods of processing them into products, means of modifying their physical properties, and the relationship between the properties and the underlying molecular and solid phase structure.

In the Department, you will find expertise in polymer kinetics, rheology, processing, compounding, specialized applications, biodegradable polymers, self-assembly and patterning, and many other areas of polymer engineering. View the pages of individual faculty members to learn about recent and ongoing research.

Robert C. Armstrong	Professor	617.253.4581 rca@mit.edu	polymer molecular theory, polymer fluid mechanics, rheology, multiscale process modeling, transport phenomena, applied mathematics
Robert E. Cohen	Professor	617.253.3777 recohen@mit.edu	physics and chemistry of polymers, polymer surfaces/interfaces, structure-property relationships
Patrick S. Doyle	Associate Professor	617.253.4534 pdoyle@mit.edu	biophysics, microfluidics separations, microrheology, polymer physics, transport phenomena
Karen K. Gleason	Professor	617.253.5066 kkgleasn@mit.edu	chemical vapor deposition, nuclear magnetic resonance
Paula T. Hammond	Professor	617.258.7577 hammond@mit.edu	macromolecular design and synthesis, directed assembly using surface templates, block copolymers, asymmetric morphologies, liquid crystalline polymeric materials, nanoscale assembly and fabrication
Gregory Rutledge	Professor	617.253.0171 rutledge@mit.edu	polymer science and engineering, statistical thermodynamics, molecular simulation