Chemical research scientist and a member of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Dr. Luke Baldwin, is working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to utilize a new synthetic chemistry tool to produce and improve new reactions on carbon derived nanomaterials.
The collaboration between AFRL and MIT is a three year partnership funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)), Basic Research Office (BRO) through the Laboratory University Collaboration Initiative (LUCI). With this fellowship, Baldwin and co-Principal Investigator, Dr. Christopher Crouse, will initiate collaborative projects with Professor Timothy Swager to propel basic science research on chemical transformations of nanomaterials.
“The LUCI funded MIT and AFRL partnership seeks to create dramatic enhancements in the efficiency for the functionalization of carbon nanomaterials. Current [Chemistry] methods are wasteful and require a massive excess of reagents, most of which produces byproducts that complicate the materials production and performance,” said MIT Professor Timothy Swager.