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.
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.
Sustainability
Safety
Complexity
Simplicity
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.
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.
Learn MoreRedox Active Polymers
Electroactive polymer systems for energy storage, charge transport, and function-forward materials design.
Learn MoreMicroplastics & AI for Polymer Research
Field-informed spectroscopy, machine learning, and environmental analysis for identifying and classifying microplastic particles and polymer spectra in complex samples.
Learn MoreIndustry
Translation, scale-up, partner engagement, and commercialization pathways for sustainable polymer technologies.
Learn MoreFunctional Polymers
Macromolecular architectures engineered for targeted chemical, physical, and biological performance.
Learn MoreHydrogels
Water-rich polymer networks for responsive materials, interfaces, and biomedical applications.
Learn MoreElectronic & Biomedical Materials
Polymer systems that connect electrochemical function, biocompatibility, and degradability.
Learn MoreSponsored Collaborations
Cross-sector partnerships translating sustainable polymer discoveries into practical technologies.
Learn More
Funding & Sponsors
Supported Research and Collaborations
Funding and sponsor information below is drawn from the saved Wooley Research Group site content in this repository.
National Science Foundation CAS 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.