Texas A&M Chemistry Wooley Research GroupDepartment of Chemistry
Research Overview

Designing Polymers for Full Circularity

The Wooley Research Program frames sustainable polymer design around four guiding ideas: sustainability, safety, complexity, and simplicity. Together, they point toward full circularity in how materials are sourced, synthesized, used, recovered, and regenerated.

Foundation 1

Sustainability

Sustainable polymer design begins with natural product feedstocks and ends with degradability and digestibility, enabling recycling processes found in Nature while reducing reliance on petrochemical building blocks.

Foundation 2

Safety

Sustainable and degradable polymers from natural products can be degraded and/or digested, improving material environmental safety. Furthermore, molecular building blocks are added to replace chemicals of concern with safe, sustainable alternatives.

Foundation 3

Complexity

Natural products provide rich chemical functionality that cannot be achieved with simpler synthetic building blocks.

Foundation 4

Simplicity

Optimization processes including green chemistry principles guide the synthetic strategies by minimizing the number of steps required to access useful materials, allowing for scaled production and reducing environmental impact.

Step 5

Full Circularity

Full circularity connects sustainable sourcing, safer end-of-life pathways, molecular complexity, and streamlined synthesis into a regenerative polymer design cycle.

Explore the science behind the cycle →
Topics Within the Lab

Current Research Areas

The lab's topic pages now group people by active research area and show compact photo tiles for each member.

Sugar-Based Polymers

Biobased monomers and degradable polymer frameworks derived from sugars and other natural product feedstocks.

Group members: Autumn Andras, Molly Bickle, Nehal Fatima, Chandeni Kassen, Dani Noggle

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Redox Active Polymers

Electroactive polymer systems for energy storage, charge transport, and function-forward materials design.

Group members: Chong-Yan Chen, Leyla Gillett, Vivian Guo, Mick Kuo

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Microplastics & AI for Polymer Research

Field-informed spectroscopy, machine learning, and environmental analysis for identifying and classifying microplastic particles and polymer spectra in complex samples.

Group members: Gavin Moore, Justin Smolen

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Industry

Translation, scale-up, partner engagement, and commercialization pathways for sustainable polymer technologies.

Group members: Senthil Kumar Boopathi, Ashlee Jahnke

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Sponsored Collaborations

Cross-sector partnerships translating sustainable polymer discoveries into practical technologies.

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Funding & Sponsors

Supported Research and Collaborations

The Wooley Research Group's work has been supported by federal agencies, foundations, and industry partners.

Logos of the group's funding agencies and sponsors: National Science Foundation, The Welch Foundation, Dow, National Institutes of Health, PEN, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, Department of the Navy Office of Naval Research, Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, and NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship.

The Welch Foundation

Sustained support for fundamental chemical research within the Wooley Research Group.

National Science Foundation CHE 2404191

Karen Wooley and Donald Darensbourg were awarded an NSF grant titled "Synthetic Methodologies to Harness Chemical Diversity of Natural Products for Production of Sustainable Next-generation Macromolecular Materials."

National Science Foundation HEGS 2343148

Justin Smolen, the Laboratory for Synthetic-Biologic Interactions, Nicholas Perez, John Casellas Connors, and Kurt Sundell were awarded an NSF grant to study microplastics in riverbed sediment systems.

Texas A&M AgriLife Grant

Justin Smolen, LSBI, and Dr. George Elane received AgriLife support for work on microplastics in farm animals.

Teysha Technologies Collaboration

The Wooley lab and Teysha Technologies filed patent applications for degradable polymer and degradable copolymer technologies.

The Dow Chemical Company

Industry sponsorship supporting polymer chemistry research and technology translation.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Federal support for biomedical and nanomedicine-related polymer research.

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)

Federal support through the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Office of Naval Research (ONR)

Department of the Navy support for materials and coatings research.

Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation

Foundation support for chemical research and scholar development.

NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF)

Federal fellowship support for space-relevant materials research.