CONGRATULATIONS to PROFESSOR and IPR DIRECTOR JEAN DUHAMEL
The MSED Award of the CIC is for ‘distinguished contributions to macromolecular science or engineering’. Prof. Duhamel has been with the Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, since 1996, and IPR Director since 2011. Tradition continues as the two inaugural IPR co-directors, Profs. Ken O’Driscoll and Alf Rudin, were also recipients of the MSED Award.
Jean Duhamel is a pioneer of fluorescence techniques in polymer science. He works very closely with his graduate students and together they have shown that by tagging macromolecules with pyrene chromophores and studying their propensity to form excimers, they could obtain new and important information about the shapes and dynamics of polymers in both solution and the solid state. Many of these studies focused on fundamental problems pertaining to macromolecules, most recently on the structure of amylopectin, a question of long-standing interest in the carbohydrate community. He and his students also applied these techniques to obtain molecular-level information about systems of technological importance. Examples include knowledge about interactions of polymers used as viscosity modifiers in motor oil, the compressibility of starch nanoparticles employed in the paper coating industry, and polymer diffusion in latex films, all the way to the behaviour of natural biopolymers in solution.
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Congratulations again, Jean!
Prof. Alex Penlidis
IPR Director 1994-2011