Mark Matsen

Professor, Chemical Engineering, Physics and Astronomy; University Research Chair

Research interests: block co-polymers; molecular self-assembly in polymeric systems; structure and behaviour of complex polymer brushes; SCFT modelling and simulation

Biography

Professor Mark W. Matsen received a BSc in Mathematical Physics from the University of Simon Fraser (1987) and his PhD in Physics from the University of Guelph (1992). After graduating with distinction, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Physics Department at the University of Washington and then in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota. He was then hired in 1996 as a Lecturer in the School of Mathematical and Physical Science at the University of Reading, where he moved up through the ranks to Reader in 2000 and then Professor in 2005. Matsen moved to the University of Waterloo in 2013, where he now holds a joint position in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and of Physics & Astronomy.

Matsen’s research focuses on theory and simulations for the self-assembly of nanostructured polymers, such as block copolymers and polymeric brushes. He has published over 130 papers in refereed journals, generating more than 14,000 citations and an h-index of 56. His research record has earned him an international reputation, which was acknowledged by the American Physical Society in 2008 when he was made a fellow for his “seminal contributions to the development and implementation of the self-consistent field theory for block-copolymer materials and polymeric brushes.” While he continues to build on his reputation for self-consistent field theory (SCFT), Matsen is currently developing the next generation of theoretical techniques, specifically field-theoretic simulations (FTS).