Charles E Sing

About

Charles E. Sing is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois. He also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and holds a professorship at the Materials Research Lab. His research focuses on the study of polymers, particularly bottlebrush polymers, block copolymers, and complex coacervation. His work involves molecular simulation studies and the investigation of dynamic covalent bond exchange and self-assembly kinetics in polymer systems. Professor Sing has contributed extensively to the understanding of polymer behavior under various conditions, including flow effects on charge transport in polymer solutions and hydrodynamic interactions in flowing polymer systems. He has been recognized with honors such as the NSF CAREER Award and participation in the US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, reflecting his significant contributions to engineering and polymer science.

Research topics

• Materials science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Nanotechnology
• Polymer science
• Computer Science
• Chemistry
• Organic chemistry
• Polymer chemistry
• Mathematics
• Chromatography

Selected publications

• Recent progress in the science of complex coacervation

  Soft Matter · 2020 · 667 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Complex coacervation is an associative, liquid-liquid phase separation that can occur in solutions of oppositely-charged macromolecular species, such as proteins, polymers, and colloids. This process results in a coacervate phase, which is a dense mix of the oppositely-charged components, and a supernatant phase, which is primarily devoid of these same species. First observed almost a century ago, coacervates have since found relevance in a wide range of applications; they are used in personal c…

  DOI

• 100th Anniversary of Macromolecular Science Viewpoint: Opportunities in the Physics of Sequence-Defined Polymers

  ACS Macro Letters · 2020 · 150 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Polymer science has been driven by ever-increasing molecular complexity, as polymer synthesis expands an already-vast palette of chemical and architectural parameter space. Copolymers represent a key example, where simple homopolymers have given rise to random, alternating, gradient, and block copolymers. Polymer physics has provided the insight needed to explore this monomer sequence parameter space. The future of polymer science, however, must contend with further increases in monomer precisio…

  DOI

• Direct-ink-write cross-linkable bottlebrush block copolymers for on-the-fly control of structural color

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-02-20 · 36 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Additive manufacturing capable of controlling and dynamically modulating structures down to the nanoscopic scale remains challenging. By marrying additive manufacturing with self-assembly, we develop a UV (ultra-violet)-assisted direct ink write approach for on-the-fly modulation of structural color by programming the assembly kinetics through photo-cross-linking. We design a photo-cross-linkable bottlebrush block copolymer solution as a printing ink that exhibits vibrant structural color (i.e.,…

  PublisherDOI

• Effect of Polypeptide Complex Coacervate Microenvironment on Protonation of a Guest Molecule

  The Journal of Physical Chemistry B · 2023-06-23 · 26 citations

  articleCorresponding

  Complex coacervate droplets formed by the liquid–liquid phase separation of polyelectrolyte solutions capture several important features of membraneless organelles including their ability to accumulate guest molecules and to provide distinct microenvironments. Here, we examine how polyions in complex coacervates can influence localized guest molecules, leading to a shifted protonation state of the guest molecule in response to its electrostatic environment. A fluorescent ratiometric pH indicator…

  PublisherDOI

• Molecular Dynamics Simulation and Theoretical Analysis of Structural Relaxation, Bond Exchange Dynamics, and Glass Transition in Vitrimers

  Macromolecules · 2025-01-30 · 22 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Vitrimers are a class of polymer networks featuring dynamic covalent cross-links that can undergo associative bond exchange. There has been recent interest in these materials due to their promise as recyclable thermosets or self-healing polymers because of the ability of vitrimer networks to rearrange at the molecular level and undergo macroscopic flow. However, the practical use of these materials often occurs in the supercooled regime or glassy state, where the implications of dynamic bonds ar…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• CAREER: Developing the Design Rules of Charge Sequence to Inform Polymer Self-Assembly

  NSF · $449k · 2017–2023

• DMREF: Engineering the On-The-Fly Control of 3-D Printed Block Bottlebrush Assemblies via Dynamic Bonds and Materials Processing

  NSF · $1.8M · 2021–2026

• Molecular Motions in Flowing Semi-dilute Polymer Solutions

  NSF · $291k · 2018–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Alfredo Alexander‐Katz

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  28 shared

• Tyler Lytle

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  23 shared

• Charles D. Young

  University of Connecticut

  20 shared

• Sarah L. Perry

  19 shared

• Sarit Dutta

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  16 shared

• Charles M. Schroeder

  Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research

  16 shared

• Mónica Olvera de la Cruz

  Northwestern University

  15 shared

• Jason Madinya

  University of Delaware

  14 shared

Labs

• Center for Biophysics and Quantitative BiologyPI

Awards & honors

• U.S. Frontiers of Engineering, NAE (2018)
• School of Chemical Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award (20…
• NSF CAREER Award (2017)
• Forbes 30 Under 30 for Science (2015)
• College of Engineering Academy of Excellence in Engineering…

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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• Nicholas Ching Hai Wuh-52
• Scott K Silvermanh-49