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Professor Mary Chan-Park’s main research interests are in polymers in nanoscience and biotechnology, and she has published extensively, with more than 175 papers in top-tier journals.

 

(1)  Antimicrobial POLYMERS 

The emergence of microbial resistance to antibiotics is a serious and growing challenge for human public health. There is an overwhelming demand for new antimicrobial materials that are not vulnerable to the development of microbial resistance and which are also non-toxic and biocompatible. Contact active antimicrobial materials, such as positively charged (cationic) polymers, kill bacteria by disrupting their membranes rather than targeting microbe metabolism and consequently are believed to be less likely to lead to resistant bacteria. Dr Chan’s group has developed a novel class of antimicrobial materials based on positively charged “sugar” polymers. Most cationic polymers are non-selectively toxic so that they kill microbes but also mammalian cells. Her “sugar-based” cationic polymers are highly selective for microbes and have record high selectivity. Further, she has designed new biomedical coatings based on nanoporous hydrogels which are highly effective to kill microbes. Most antimicrobial coatings are non-porous solids, and the polymers significantly lose antibacterial efficacy when immobilized.  The hydrogel coatings, on the other hand, have interior space to “receive” the disrupted mammalian cell membranes and have excellent antimicrobial efficacy. Their findings have recently been published in Nature Materials, Advanced Materials and Biomaterials. Her discovery of a new contact-active mechanism for killing microbes forms the basis for the design and synthesis of a wide range of polycationic antimicrobial materials for diverse applications, ranging from biomedical implants to paints and other surface coatings for aseptic environment in medical facilities.

 

(2)  Dispersing and Sorting Carbon Nanotubes with POLYMERS and CNT composites

Dr Chan has also investigated the application of polymers in carbon nanotubes and organic electronics. Her team has invented various polymers and small molecules that can individually disperse carbon nanotubes and sort the nanotubes, which is a prerequisite to exploitation of the high mechanical and electronic properties of CNTs. Their findings in carbon nanotubes and organic electronics have been published in more than 40 journal papers in top journals such as JACS, Small, Advanced Functional Materials, Chemistry of Materials etc. The group is also exploring commercialization of their sorting technology.

 

Dr Chan is an elected fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biomedical Engineering. She is also on the Editorial Board of three international and highly reputed journals: (i) Journal of Biomedical Materials Research: Part A (ii) American Chemical Society Applied Materials and Interfaces and (iii) Polymers for Advanced Technologies. She has published extensively in top tier journals such as Nature Materials, Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, Small, Biomaterials, etc. Her work in the past 10 years has garnered total citations of more than 2000 and led to about 20 patents/patent applications.

 

Dr Mary Chan obtained her B.Eng (Chem) and PH.D from the National University of Singapore and MIT in 1986 and 1993 respectively. Prior to joining NTU in 2001, she worked in the chemical industry.  She was formerly a senior technical manager in Sipix Imaging (CA, USA) working on Epaper development.