Elisabeth Prince (She/Her)

Elisabeth Prince joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo in January 2023. Her research interests lie at the interface of polymer chemistry, sustainable plastics, and biomaterials engineering.

Elisabeth started her education at the University of Toronto, where she received her undergraduate degree in Biological Chemistry. In 2021 she received her PhD in Polymer and Materials Chemistry from the University of Toronto. During her PhD, she designed nanostructured hydrogels that mimic the architecture and mechanical properties of native biological tissues. In collaboration with the Princess Margaret Cancer Center, she developed new hydrogel matrices for growing patient-derived microtumors, which are an emerging platform for developing personalized cancer therapies. She was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal for her PhD thesis.

After completing her PhD, she was an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she pivoted her research interests towards addressing the plastic waste crisis. During her postdoc, she developed new chemistry for recycling vinylic plastics and thermosets. While at MIT, she also developed T-REX: a degradable thermoset for room temperature storage of nucleic acids.

Dr. Prince's group at the University of Waterloo is building on her polymer and materials science expertise to address challenges in sustainability and healthcare. The Prince Group is developing new polymer chemistry-based tools for addressing the global plastic waste crisis and novel biodegradable polymers for drug delivery and regenerative medicine. In 2023, she was awarded the John C. Polanyi Prize for Chemistry for her group’s work.

• Polymer chemistry

• Biodegradable polymers

• Plastics recycling

• Drug delivery

• Polymer synthesis

• Sustainable plastics

• Injectable hydrogels

• Tissue engineering

• Biomedical engineering

• Biomimetic hydrogels

• Filamentous hydrogels

• 2021-2022, NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• 2021, Doctorate, Polymer and Materials Chemistry, University of Toronto

• 2016, Honours Bachelor of Science, Biological Chemistry Specialist, University of Toronto

• 2025, Materials Research Society Early Career Distinguished Presenter

• 2024, WIN Research Leaders Award, Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology

• 2023, John Charles Polanyi Prize in Chemistry, Government of Ontario

• 2021-2022, NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• 2022, Governor General's Gold Medal, University of Toronto

• 2022, Chair's Doctoral Medal, University of Toronto

• 2018, NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral, University of Toronto

• 2018, Xerox Research Center of Canada Award, University of Toronto

• 2017, NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship - Masters, University of Toronto

• 2016, Queen Elisabeth II/Martin Moskovitz GSST, University of Toronto

• BME 561 - Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering
  • Taught in 2025
• CHE 102 - Chemistry for Engineers
  • Taught in 2023, 2024
• CHE 561 - Biomaterials and Biomedical Design
  • Taught in 2025
• CHE 640 - Principles of Polymer Science
  • Taught in 2024, 2025
• NE 488 - Biomaterials and Biomedical Design
  • Taught in 2025

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Ghorbani M., and Prince E., Radical Ring-Opening Polymerization: Unlocking the Potential of Vinyl Polymers for Drug Delivery, Tissue Engineering, and More, Biomacromolecules, Volume 26, 118-139, 2025.

• Prince E., Cheng H.F., Banal J.L., and Johnson J.A., Reversible Nucleic Acid Storage in Deconstructable Glassy Polymer Networks, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Volume 127, 17066-17074, 2024.

• Prince E., Designing Biomimetic Strain-Stiffening into Synthetic Hydrogels, Biomacromolecules, Volume 25, 6283–6295, 2024.

• Prince E., Morozova S., Chen Z., Adibnia V., Yakavets I., Panyukov S., Rubinstein M., and Kumacheva E., Nanocolloidal hydrogel mimics the structure and nonlinear mechanical properties of biological fibrous networks, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Volume 120, e2220755120, 2023.

• Prince E., Cruickshank J., Ba-Alawi W., Hodgson K., Haight J., Tobin C., Wakeman A., Avoulov A., Topolskaia V., Elliott M.J., McGuigan A.P., Berman H.K., Haibe-Kains B., Cescon D.W., and Kumacheva E., Biomimetic hydrogel supports initiation and growth of patient-derived breast tumor organoids, Nature Communications, Volume 13, 2023.

• Kiel G.R., Lundberg D.J., Prince E., Husted K.E.L., Johnson A.M., Lensch V., Li S., Shieh P., and Johnson J.A., Cleavable Comonomers for Chemically Recyclable Polystyrene: A General Approach to Vinyl Polymer Circularity, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Volume 127, 12979-12988, 2023.

• Prince E., and Kumacheva E., Design and applications of man-made biomimetic fibrillar hydrogels, Nature Reviews Materials, Volume 4, 99-115, 2022.

• Prince E., Chen Z., Khuu N., and Kumacheva E., Nanofibrillar Hydrogel Recapitulates Changes Occurring in the Fibrotic Extracellular Matrix, Biomacromolecules, Volume 22, 2352-2362, 2022.

• Li Y., Li Y., Prince E., Weitz J.I., Panyukov S., Ramachandran A., Rubinstein M., and Kumacheva E., Fibrous hydrogels under biaxial confinement, Nature Communications, Volume 13, 3264, 2022.

• More than $1.1 million awarded to researchers
• T-REX: Scientists preserve DNA in an amber like polymer
• Prestigious Polanyi Prize awarded to Elisabeth Prince for plastic waste research
• Professor Elisabeth Prince participates in UN Conference Delegation to combat plastic pollution
• Research team invents a hydrogel to heal "broken" hearts