(4dd) Leveraging Biopolymer Processing and Systems Thinking for the Replacement of Critical Plastic Infrastructure

Petroleum-derived plastics have become intrinsic to modern life, simultaneously unavoidable and indispensable to healthcare, food storage and distribution, transportation, and consumer products of all sorts. These materials have beneficial characteristics like durability, low cost, low density, good barrier properties, and a wide scope of tailorable attributes. It is increasingly evident, however, that the current scale of plastic production is unsustainable considering poor recycling recovery and emerging concerns around pollution caused by plastic additives and micro- and nanoplastics. One attractive alternative for petroleum-derived plastics is the application of biodegradable, biologically-derived polymers such as polysaccharides. In recent years, significant advances have been made in the processing of biopolymers, both to isolate their constituent species and to chemically shape and modify their properties. Through my faculty work, I aim to apply my diverse research background towards identifying the system-scale financial and behavioral incentives that drive industrial plastic usage and leverage this information to develop biodegradable polymers from local food wastes that meet or exceed the functionality of fossil-fuel derived plastics.

Research Interests

My lab group will integrate wet-lab materials investigations with survey-based research methods to holistically address plastic pollution. I aim to tailor my research towards the university’s local community to explore how academic-industrial collaborations can be leveraged as bridges to sustainable development. In the laboratory, I will investigate methods for modifying and shaping naturally-occurring biopolymers to perform tasks such as water retention, selective filtration, and timed release of beneficial chemicals. Drawing on local organic waste streams such as agricultural biomass, industrial food processing wastes, and restaurant discards, I aim to develop processing methods that can divert these valuable wastes back into the economy. The overarching themes of my early research work encapsulate the ideas of Materials as Nutrients and User Experts.

Materials as Nutrients. This idea expands on the concept of circularity, focusing on the end-of-life utility that designed materials may offer through soil amendment or animal consumption. I will initially focus on agricultural materials, where high volumes of hard-to-recover plastic products are used and disposed of annually. In these applications, plastics are often placed in direct contact with soil or harvested crops where environmentally degraded plastics can transfer harmful residues like additives and microplastics to food and cropland or may even be directly consumed by livestock. Following their useful life, these plastics must be collected from the field or removed from animal feed and transported to landfill or recycling facilities at a sizeable burden to independent farmers in rural communities. Preliminary results of a survey distributed to Midwestern farmers designed as part of my postdoctoral work, shows that a large fraction of farmers burn their plastic waste because waste management infrastructure is inaccessible. Therefore, I see a need for agricultural materials that do not need to be recovered from the field and can simultaneously provide utility at their end of life. Based on my continued engagement with User Experts, my research group will tailor biopolymer materials for ease of use and with deployment processes that integrate into existing infrastructure on farms.

Two promising project areas I am exploring are the spherification of cellulose for the encapsulation of delayed-release of pesticides and microcrystalline cellulose foams for water retention in soil. Building on my dissertation work on processing whole cellulosic biomass via ionic liquids, I plan to explore deeper into how binary and ternary solvent systems can be applied to tune precipitated cellulose microstructure and interfacial properties. These learnings with cellulose will provide a great potential for transferability to other prevalent polysaccharide polymers including chitin derived from shellfish and fungi, and alginate from algae. Drawing inspiration from the university’s locality, I aim to develop connections with local industry to source research materials—whether that looks like farm residues, wastes from local fisheries, or partnering with restaurants. The end goal of this work is not necessarily to develop direct substitutions for conventional plastics, but to identify the tasks the original plastic was meant to accomplish and design materials that meet those needs while reducing the net environmental impact of the activity.

User Experts. Understanding the driving forces and mass balance in the consumer plastic market is an important aspect of managing plastic pollution. This work will build on skills developed during my postdoctoral experience surveying farmers in the Midwest about their plastic usage and perceived barriers towards participating in plastic recycling. Leveraging quantitative and qualitative social science techniques through surveys and interviews, my research group will engage with local businesses and producer communities to gain a better understanding of plastic flows and where possible interventions will be most impactful. Major goals of this research include identifying where plastic is being lost from the circular economy (including landfill and burning), identifying barriers to material recovery, and assessing knowledge gaps in the community regarding environmental best practices and access to available resources. In compiling this information, I aim to initiate collaborations across industry, government, and academia by identifying points for intervention and connecting stakeholders to work in multi-institutional teams. As a postdoc at NIST, I have had the benefit of participating in multi-institutional collaborations with both academic and industrial partners as well as interagency collaborations, giving me a framework to build these relationships on.

Two key industries of interest include agriculture and recycling, which both tend to function in the US as distributed networks of smaller scale owner-operators. While this complicates the ability for these industries to coordinate on the national scale, the more localized nature of their operation offers more opportunity to work at the local scale and to test experimental interventions. To engage with farmers, I plan to attend local farming expos and collaborate with county extension agents located at the state Land-grant university. In this relationship building, I aim to learn about material needs in the farming community and identify ‘early adopters’ who would be willing to provide land and expertise in pilot scale field experiments. I will do the same network building within the local recycling industry and at national recycling meetings to identify resource gaps and possible collaborators.

Teaching Interests

I believe that teaching and learning are social enterprises reliant on developing human connections in the classroom and with the course content. Through my teaching, I strive to create a welcoming environment that fosters a community of learners and aims to instill a growth mindset, or the belief that skills and intelligence can improve with practice and persistence. I am particularly interested in developing academic foundations and students’ professional sense of self through a strong early engineering curriculum. I see my research, teaching, and service as an interconnected ecosystem aligned towards the goals of diversity, equity, inclusion, and sustainability both within and outside the university. Through developing strong research ties with the local community and bringing my research into the classroom, I hope to inspire students to see how their future work can have benefits at the human scale.

Course wise, I am interested in teaching introduction to materials and any polymer focused courses (i.e., polymer- physics, chemistry, mechanics, or special topics). I am also equipped to teach thermodynamics and kinetics. Long term, I aim to develop a course on recycling and its value chain.