Prof. David A. Hoagland, department head of Polymer Science and Engineering Department (PSE) at University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst, visits Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (CIAC) on November 7-12 to teach the graduate students a special topic course on Charged Polymers.

The intensive 5-day course is to cover the basic theory necessary for a comprehensive understanding of charged polymers. The course begins with the basics of electrostatics for the students to better understand how charges, more specifically ionizable units, affect polymer behavior, and then focuses on characteristic properties and differences of polyelectrolytes and ionomers, which are the two most important classes of charged polymers. The last portion of the course considers electrostatic complexation of charged polymers with other charged species.

David A. Hoagland received his B.S. degree from Stanford University in 1980, and the M.A. and Ph.D. degree from Princeton University in 1981 and 1986 respectively. He became an assistant professor at UMass Amherst, and was promoted to full professor in 2003. Prof. Hoagland is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and has been awarded many honors for his distinctive contributions in his research fields. His research interests include polyelectrolytes, confined polymers, aqueous gels, water-soluble polymers, polymer separations and characterization, and polymers in ionic liquids.