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CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Envisioning the Future
Yueh-Lin “Lynn” Loo
Title: Assistant
Professor of Chemical Engineering
and General Dynamics Endowed Faculty
Fellow, University of Texas at
Austin
Education: Ph.D.,
M.A., Chemical Engineering,
Princeton University; B.S.E.,
Chemical Engineering and B.S.E.,
Materials Science and Engineering,
University of Pennsylvania
Age: 31
Dr.
Lynn Loo spends much of her time
envisioning the future: A TV that
you can roll up and drop into a
carry-on bag for a long flight.
Kitchen wallpaper that can be
changed with the flick of a wrist.
Loo’s research in the emerging field
of plastic electronics could help
turn those dreams into reality.
Plastic electronics use organic and
plastic materials to create
electronic devices. Much of the work
remains firmly in the world of
science fiction, but practical
applications aren’t far away. The
technology would offer advantages
over current silicon-based
technology because it is lighter and
more flexible.
Loo
credits her colleagues and
administrators at the University of
Texas at Austin, where she’s been
since 2001, with providing the
necessary support, encouragement and
infrastructure. “You need someone to
pick you up when you’re down,” she
says. “Sounding boards are
important.”
UT’s
atmosphere and its top-ranked
chemical engineering department were
two of the factors that led Loo to
Texas after earning her Ph.D. from
Princeton University. She worked at
Bell Labs in New Jersey for a year
as a researcher, but chose the
academic path so she could run a
research program, as well as
interact with students regularly. In
fall 2005, she taught an
upper-division course on polymers.
At
Bell Labs, she invented nanotransfer
printing, an environmentally safe
way of putting electric circuits on
plastic.
Similar to offset printing, a rubber
stamp imprints nanoscale designs
onto plastic. Fast and inexpensive,
it could be used to make large-area,
flexible flat panel displays — like
for TVs and wallpaper. Other
possible applications include new
medical therapies and diagnostics,
such as implantable devices that
would release a drug when a person’s
body temperature changed.
Generally, much of the research in
plastic electronics so far has
involved discovering polymer
combinations that work. Loo,
however, focuses on why certain
combinations work, so other
researchers can use the proper
materials to make specific devices.
She has published articles in the
Journal of the American Chemical
Society and other science and
technology periodicals.
She
tries to model herself after her
father, who taught her “if you want
to be treated fairly, then be fair
yourself.”
That
mantra doesn’t surprise Dr. Rick
Register, Loo’s dissertation advisor
and a Princeton professor. As a
graduate student, he says she
regularly advised chemical
engineering undergraduates,
regardless of whether they were
full-time students or simply there
for the summer.
“She is always wanting to give
back,” Register says. “She has an
unparalleled love for what she
does.”
Loo
received a $440,000 National Science
Foundation Early Career Devel-opment
Award in 2004 and a Beckman
Foundation Young Investigator Award
last year.
Like
many young professionals, Loo
considers time management her main
challenge as she juggles research,
teaching, supervising graduate
students, grant writing, student
extracurricular activities and a
marriage.
“It’s
so hard to say ‘no’ to things,” she
says. “I don’t find myself sinking,
but I know I’m constantly trying to
catch my breath.”
She
became drawn to science as a child
growing up in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia. She was mesmerized even as
a young girl by the refinery charts
her father brought home from his job
at Shell Oil. Her favorite “toys”
were test tubes her father brought
home from work, or “any other
container where I could stir things,
whether it was leaves or cut-up
worms.”
—
By Lydia Lum
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Copyright 2005 by
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