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Welcome to the Emulsion Polymers Institute (EPI) at Lehigh University

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  Iacocca Hall, Mountaintop Campus, home of the Emulsion Polymers Institute. EPI logo on a field of polystyrene latex particles as viewed by transmission electron microscopy.
    

Our Mission

  • To develop and carry out broad-based fundamental and applied research in the area of polymer colloids

  • To educate scientists and engineers in the polymer colloids field for industrial and academic careers


Quick News Flashes


  •  PLEASE NOTE: The 2012 Short Course will be held June 11-15, 2012.  NOW ACCEPTING REGISTRATIONS ! Course brochures will be mailed out in early January 2011. If you would like to be added to the short course mailing list to receive a brochure, please click here and include your mailing address and e-mail address as well. You can also click here to go to the course web page and download the registration form for the 2012 course whiuch is now available. when available in late November/early December 2011.


  •  The 2011 Institute's Annual Review Meeting was held on April 13 and 14, 2011. Graduate student Lily Liu won the annual Kenneth A. Earhart award in recognition of her excellence in polymer colloid research. Best poster awards were given to Bu (Roy) Xu (1st), Funian Zhao (2nd) and Qianying (Bonny) Guo (3rd).Please click on the What's New link on the left for additional information. Congratulations to the 2011 winners. The list of presentations and posters are given below.

 

               PRESENTATIONS

Title

Student

Faculty Advisor(s)
Redox-Initiated 'Adiabatic' Emulsion Polymerization Shi Wang Eric Daniels, Mohamed El-Aasser and Andy Klein
Synthesis and Pyrolysis of Pt-Containing PAN/PS Nanocomposites Yuzhen Yang Eric Daniels, Mohamed El-Aasser and Andy Klein
Opto-Fluidic Device for the Detection of Viral Particles Yi Hu Daniel Ou-Yang and Xuanhong Cheng
Control of Surface Topography for Immuno-Affinity Cell Isolation Bu Wang Xuanhong Cheng
Low Frequency Electrical Polarizability of Colloids: Consequences to Dielectrophoresis Jingyu Wang Daniel Ou-Yang
Aspects of Film Formation from Bimodal Latexes Lili Liu  
Online Conductivity and Stability in Emulsion Polymerization of n-Butyl Methacrylate Funian Zhao Eric Daniels, Mohamed El-Aasser and Andy Klein
Water Sensitivity of Poly(Vinyl Acetate) Latex Films Zhijin Chen Eric Daniels and Andy Klein
Chaos and Order in Suspensions-From Rheology to Microstructure Bu Xu Jim Gilchrist
Inorganic-Organic Hybrid Vesicles with Counterion- and pH-Controlled Fluorescent Properties Dong Li Tianbo Liu
Design of Ordered, Hierarchically Porous Titania Structures as Hydrothermally Stable Materials for Biomass Catalysis Qianying Guo Mark Snyder

POSTERS

Title Student Faculty Advisor(s)
Online Conductivity and Stability in Emulsion Polymerization of n-Butyl Methacrylate Funian Zhao Eric Daniels, Mohamed El-Aasser and Andy Klein
Synthesis and Pyrolysis of Pt-containing PAN/PS Nanocomposites Yuzhen Yang Eric Daniels, Mohamed El-Aasser and Andy Klein
Redox-Initiated 'Adiabatic' Emulsion Polymerization Shi Wang Eric Daniels, Mohamed El-Aasser and Andy Klein
Aspects of Film Formation from Bimodal Latexes Lili Liu Eric Daniels and Andy Klein
Water Sensitivity of Poly(Vinyl Acetate) Latex: Crosslinking Mechanism Studies Zhijin Chen Eric Daniels and Andy Klein
Optically Forced Cytometry for in situ Bio-nanoparticle Enumeration Yi Hu Daniel Ou-Yang and Xuanhong Cheng
Low-Frequency Dielectric Response of a Single Particle in Aqueous Suspensions Jingyu Wang Daniel Ou-Yang
Direct Investigation on Flow-Induced Microstructure Formation in Colloidal Suspensions Bu Xu Jim Gilchrist
Hierarchical; Engineering of Tunable Nanoparticulate and Templated Porous Films Zheng Tian Mark Snyder
Design of Ordered, Hierarchically Porous Titania Structures as Hydrothermally Stable Materials for Biomass catalysis Qianying Guo Mark Snyder
Inorganic-Organic Hybrid Vesicles with Counterion- and pH-Controlled Fluorescent Properties Dong Li Tianbo Liu
Conjugated Polymers Containing Polyoxometalate Clusters as Side Chains Panchao Yin Tianbo Liu

Please note that ONLY members of the EPI Industrial Liaison Program have access to the presentations. CDs containing the presentations have been sent to the contacts at each liaison member company.



            Overview of the EPI

   Originally established in 1975, the Emulsion Polymers Institute (EPI),
provides a focus for graduate education and research in polymer
colloids. Formation of the institute constituted formal recognition of an
activity that has grown steadily since the late 1960s. Recently the
research thrust of the Institute has been broadened to include
engineered particles. The new focus of the Institute is rooted
in fundamental scientific-based particle design, but guided by identified
application areas, while still maintaining a core competence in emulsion
polymerization. The rapidly broadening applications for particle
technologies in fields such as biotechnology (e.g., drug delivery, imaging, assembly of biocompatible scaffolds), nanotechnology (e.g.,
directed assembly of hierarchically ordered, functional structures),
and others demand a concomitant diversification of the Institute to
include a much broader class of particles: polymeric, inorganic, hybrid,
macroionic, metallic, as well as novel particulate composites designed
at the nanoscale that will span all industrially-relevant scales.

 The Institute's staff comprises faculty members from the departments of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Materials Science and Engineering and Physics, research scientists, post-doctoral fellows, and visiting research scientists from many parts of the world. In addition, the Institute has close ties with polymer and surface scientists in the Center for Polymer Science and Engineering (CPSE) and the Center for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology (CAMN). The Institute has 13 graduate students drawn primarily from theses various departments. 

     The financial support of the Institute comes from our Industrial Liaison Program with member companies from all over the world, contract and grant research from government agencies and industry, and proceeds of the Annual Short Course.

 
 
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© 2011 Emulsion Polymers Institute  Lehigh University, 111Research Drive, Bethlehem, Pa. 18015 
Tel. (610) 758-3602   Fax (610) 785-5880
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