About the Founder

Academic journey

I started out undeclared at Allan Hancock College, a community college in Santa Maria, CA. It wasn't exactly a straight line into a chemistry Ph.D., but it's where I got my footing. From there I transferred to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for a B.S. in Biochemistry, where I worked in Dr. Philip Costanzo's lab synthesizing biocompatible polymers and collaborating with Sandia National Laboratories on scintillator development. It was my first real taste of polymer synthesis, and the thing that hooked me.

That led to a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of New Hampshire's Center for Sustainable Polymers, advised by Dr. Nate Oldenhuis. My dissertation work lived at the intersection of polymer chemistry and molecular biology: designing RAFT, ATRP, and ROMP agents for polymer grafting, building DNA hydrogels and nanostructures templated with DNA, and developing psoralen PEG conjugates for DNA 3D printing. It's also where I spent a lot of quality time with a Schlenk line, including the good, the tedious, and the "why won't this degas" moments.

Current work

Since 2024 I've been a Senior Scientist at Eastern Research Group, where I support Department of Defense research programs focused on advanced materials. The heart of the job is materials development and characterization: designing and optimizing new polymer and formulation systems, then leaning on analytical instrumentation, XPS, SEM, TEM, GPC, DSC, NMR, and HPLC among others, to understand what I've actually made and why it behaves the way it does. I work across multidisciplinary teams and external partners to take a material from early bench work through scale-up and full production, and I use data analysis and statistical methods to keep decisions grounded as batches grow from grams to hundreds of liters. I also help write proposals for internally and externally funded research. It's taught me a lot about how a small assumption early on can compound once something moves to a larger scale.

What I focus on

Across my research and this site, the work keeps coming back to a handful of things:

• Materials development & formulation — designing and optimizing polymer and formulation systems (polyurethanes, epoxies, PDMS, acrylates, controlled and free-radical polymers) against real performance targets.
• Materials characterization — surface and bulk analysis with XPS, SEM, TEM, AFM, and DLS to connect structure and morphology to properties.
• Analytical instrumentation — GPC/SEC, DSC, TGA, DMA, NMR, FTIR, UV-Vis, HPLC, and LC-MS for identity, purity, thermal behavior, and molecular weight.
• Process scale-up — moving formulations from bench (0.5–5 L) through pilot and industrial scale with process optimization and SOP development.
• Data & statistical analysis — turning experimental data into decisions with MATLAB, Origin, and Excel-based modeling.
• Cross-functional collaboration — working with internal teams and external partners, and communicating results through technical reviews and proposals.

Why I built this

It started as a single reaction calculator. The goal grew: one place a polymer scientist at any stage can actually get their work done. I wanted it to meet people wherever they are. An undergrad seeing ATRP for the first time can read the mechanism schemes and the plain language glossary, then run the same calculator a professional would use for a real recipe. A grad student can design a block copolymer, predict a T_g, or figure out what a shouldering GPC peak is really telling them. A formulation chemist in industry can size up a polyurethane or an emulsion batch in a couple of minutes. Same tool, no assumption about how much you already know walking in.

That's why it keeps widening rather than going deeper into one niche. The calculator now spans ATRP, RAFT, ROMP, and free radical polymerization, block copolymers, stock solutions, a polyurethane tab built around capping and chain extension, and an emulsion polymerization tab that predicts particle size. Around it sit the tools I kept wishing existed: a Mayo-Lewis copolymer composition calculator, a GPC calibration converter, a T_g predictor, a recipe scaler, and a polymer structure search you can query by name or by drawing the repeat unit. Every calculator also writes out a suggested experimental procedure from your actual numbers, so the gap between the arithmetic and the bench is a little smaller. The reference side, the mechanism diagrams, the air free and conversion monitoring guides, the full walkthrough of reading a real chromatogram past just the M_n and M_w numbers, is there for the same reason: to teach as much as it calculates.

If it saves you the five minutes of scratch paper arithmetic I used to do before every reaction, or helps a student finally understand why a controlled polymerization stays controlled, it's done its job. And yes, there's a small maze game in here too. Not everything about polymer chemistry has to be serious.

Selected publications

• Pierini, N.; Paiva, W.; Dobbins, A.; Durant, O.; Wheeler, B.; Vesenka, J.; Oldenhuis, N. "Unimolecular DNA bottlebrush polymers with topologically defined, biodegradable backbones." Polym. Chem. 2025, 16, 2646 to 2658. doi.org/10.1039/D5PY00082C
• Hughes, S. M.; Aykanat, A.; Pierini, N. G.; Paiva, W. A.; Weeks, A. A.; Edwards, A. S.; Durant, O. C.; Oldenhuis, N. J. "DNA Intercalating Supramolecular Hydrogels for Tunable Thermal and Viscoelastic Properties." Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2024, 63, e202411115. doi.org/10.1002/anie.202411115
• Alameda, B. M.; Palmer, T. C.; Sisemore, J. D.; Pierini, N. G.; Patton, D. L. "Hydrolytically Degradable Poly(β Thioether Ester Ketal) Thermosets via Radical Mediated Thiol Ene Photopolymerization." Polym. Chem. 2019, 10 (41), 5635 to 5644.