Welcome to the Notre Dame Soft Materials Innovation Laboratory + Education!
Our multidisciplinary research group utilizes multimodal characterization approaches to understand and engineer soft materials from the molecular to macroscale. We apply these fundamental principals to applications in manufacturing, environmental sustainability, brain health, and global food security. Additionally, we value translational research and thus continually strive to strategically position our discoveries to have a longitudinal impact on global job creation through product development and/or strengthening our US K-12 STEM pipeline through lesson plan and K-12 module development. Please click around to learn more about our team and research endeavors! For prosepective students, media inquires, collaboration interests, or if you would like to fund our research, please email Principal Investigator Gabriel R. Burks at gburks2@nd.edu.
Our Lab Values
Our lab is a place where diversity, mutual respect, creativity, hard work, camaraderie, frequent communication, community engagement, idea exploration, and safe risk-taking are valued and encouraged. We believe that these values are essential for creating a positive and productive scientific community and are committed to upholding them in all that we do.
Want to learn more or join our team?
We are actively recruiting driven, competitive, societally aware, and intelligent aspiring scholars to join our team! Students with diverse skillsets and non-traditional experiences who are interested in the complex world of polymer exploration and making the world a better place for all, please send me an email gburks2@nd.edu. Let's talk about your interests and map out a career pathway for you!
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