Jodie Lutkenhaus facts for kids

Jodie L. Lutkenhaus is a professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University. She works on creating special materials called redox active polymers. These materials are used for storing energy and making smart coatings. In 2019, Professor Lutkenhaus and Karen L. Wooley showed the world's first battery made from biodegradable peptides. She is also recognized as a Young Scientist by the World Economic Forum.

Early Life and Education

Jodie Lutkenhaus was inspired to study engineering by her parents. Her mother studied chemistry, and her father studied physics. She went to the University of Texas at Austin and earned her degree in chemical engineering in 2002.

After that, she moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She completed her advanced degree there in 2007. Her main teacher was Paula T. Hammond. After MIT, Professor Lutkenhaus worked at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 2008, she joined the teaching staff at Yale University.

Research and Career

Professor Lutkenhaus joined Texas A&M University in 2010. She became an Associate Professor in 2015. She creates new materials for storing energy and for smart coatings. These materials include polyelectrolytes and redox active polymers. Her goal is to make soft and flexible power sources for things you can wear, like smartwatches. She wants these power sources to be strong, good for the environment, and work well.

It's usually hard to use polymers in batteries because they are not good at holding and moving electrons. But Professor Lutkenhaus has shown that special polymers called organic radical polymers can move electrons quickly. This means they can charge very fast. If these polymers were used in portable devices, they could make charging much quicker.

She uses a tool called an electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance to measure how fast charges move in these materials. Professor Lutkenhaus hopes that future batteries will not need metals. Instead, they would be made from organic materials and could be recycled easily. Right now, only a small part of lithium-ion batteries are recycled.

Professor Lutkenhaus and Professor Wooley showed that glutamic acid can be used to make batteries. This was the first battery made completely from biodegradable protein. These special proteins contain compounds that can react to store energy.

She also studies how thin layers of polymers act in small spaces. She is working on new two-dimensional materials called transition metal-carbon nanosheets (MXenes). These are very thin, sheet-like structures made from layers of ceramics. She also looks at how the chemical structure of these materials affects how they conduct electricity. She has shown that devices made from MXenes and polyelectrolytes can sense humidity and pressure. This is because water helps the charged molecules relax by reducing their electrical pull on each other.

Awards and Honours

• 2011 National Science Foundation CAREER Award
• 2012 Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Young Faculty
• 2013 Air Force Research Laboratory Young Investigator Prize
• 2014 Kaneka Corporation Faculty Scholarship
• 2014 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award
• 2016 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Van Ness Lectureship
• 2018 American Chemical Society WCC Rising Star Award
• 2018 University of Notre Dame Thiele Lectureship
• 2018 Texas A&M University Presidential Impact Fellow
• 2019 Japanese-American-German Frontiers of Science Kavli Foundation Fellow
• 2019 World Economic Forum Young Scientist

Publications

Professor Lutkenhaus helps decide what articles get published in science journals. She is on the editorial boards for ACS Macro Letters, Macromolecules, and Scientific Reports.

Personal Life

Jodie Lutkenhaus is married to Ben Wilhite, who is also a chemical engineer and a professor at Texas A&M University. They have two sons. Her older sister, Jessica Winter, is also a scientist.

See also

In Spanish: Jodie Lutkenhaus para niños