Matthew R. Golder (he/him)

Matthew Golder received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Rochester in 2010. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in 2015 from the University of Oregon working under Ramesh Jasti on the total synthesis and characterization of strained aromatic "nanohoops". His graduate work was recognized with an IUPAC-Solvay International Award for Young Chemists. Matt was then an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow with Jeremiah Johnson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he worked at the interface of polymer methodology, soft materials, and drug delivery. In 2019, Matt joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington as an Assistant Professor.

Matt's research team is in a unique position to utilize synthetic chemistry to build novel macromolecular architectures that address challenges spanning energy, sustainability, and engineering. The discovery of structural motifs spanning a variety of size regimes requires innovative approaches to construct and link functional building blocks, thus requiring an expertise in both organic synthesis and polymer chemistry. Some representative goals of our research team include: (1) design of methodology to access functional cyclic polymers, (2) development of "shapeshifting" performance soft materials, (3) synthetic mechanochemistry to sustainably access novel soft materials that are inaccessible using conventional methods, and (4) predictable upcycling and degradation of post-consumer plastics into value-added feedstocks and materials.