The Swager Group

Happy Tuesday: 🖼️'s from the award ceremony! Collette, a NOBCChE collaborative student representative, and Jennifer represented MIT at the Graduate School Fair at the NOBCChE conference. FYI, Tim also serves as an MIT faculty representative. Also, a nice reunion with former MSRP alumnus Arinze!

🫡: A belated post, but we are happy to celebrate our group members presenting at the NOBCChE conference last month! Collette and Jennifer represented our group while reuniting with Kayla (our former group graduate!), Andy, and Eric. Collette also earned First Place in the NSF Innovation Tank Talk!

Better pictures thanks to Ming, our professional photographer and also an enthusiastic postdoc! Can you name the members in the picture (harder question: not in the picture as well?!?)?

From explosives to ketones, all the way to PFAS, ethylene, and finally hydrogen sensing, the story of chemiresistors and biosensors in our lab still continues until today. Reunion with our alumni Prof. Richard Liu & @lennonluo.bsky.social @harvard.edu and a group photo in front of a group picture!

📣: Tim gave the Max Tishler Prize Lecture today @harvard.edu and got the medallion from our alumnus (and now a faculty member in the Department’s next door to us!) Richard. In a breezy day in Cambridge, we got together with our colleagues to listen to Tim’s exciting story 🎉!

The above article was published in @jacs.acspublications.org earlier today!

📜🚨: New paper coming to your area! As promised, in this work, Daniel showcases an efficient synthesis of FOPCOT, which can be used as organic Faraday rotators. Thank you to our collaborators at SUNY Buffalo, Molly, Harry, and Peter from MIT XRD! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

📰: Our rising 5th year stars Molly and Daniel along with our postdoc Maryam presented their research yesterday at the @mitchemistry.bsky.social - Merck symposium! While you probably have seen Molly's and Maryam's work elsewhere on the net before, stay tuned for Daniel's very soon!

Forgot to mention but we have our awesome postdocs Chi-Hsien, Ming, Sung Hwa, and the energetic/fabulous graduate students Jennifer, Francesca, Rina, and Tiffany! 🌹🌹🌹

🏐🦞: Repost from MIT Grad Rat Instagram! The lobsters are vibing with the last bit of Cambridge's summer weather before the fall foliage. Can you tell us what and how are our lobsters doing? If not, pay attention to the first pictures! Following the heated match is the Muddy's...

✍️: We gathered together last night to send our best wishes to our recent graduate Haosheng for his future journey! Following the fulfilling hotpot dinner, we had a friendly 🎱 match along with great 🍻 and conversations! So far, a successful lab social before the fall semester starts next week!

✌️: Say hi to our newest lab member, Benjamin, who's from Heidelberg in Germany! He did his bachelor thesis in the Levkin group at the KIT and is currently pursuing his master's at Heidelberg University. He interned at the startup Panosome before joining our lab. A warm welcome!

🧨🍾 to Tim for winning the Arthur C. Cope Award and giving such a great lecture today! Featured in the photo below are Tim and the lobster crew: our postdocs Chi-Hsien and Harry, our former Ph.D. graduate @lennonluo.bsky.social, and our soon-to-be doctor Molly! Please enjoy the vibe while it lasts!!

Our great leader Tim is currently giving his Arthur C. Cope Award Lecture at ACS Fall 2025 under the topic of "materialverse" where opportunities never cease to amaze anyone! Looks like we have a great attendance there, so you certainly do not want to miss this great talk!!!

🧑‍💻: Molly's podium presentation is currently happening in the ACS Fall 2025, and let us brag about how great she is in any role - as a person, speaker, or chemist! You definitely do not want to miss the talk! And less than two hours is Tim's talk - stay tuned for more fun with the lobsters 😉

As our kick-off member today in the ACS Fall 2025 meeting, our gorgeous postdoc Chi-Hsien also presented her work in the group about detecting NDMA in aqueous media using a novel colorimetric assay. Watch out as this work will be featured in a journal near you very soon (catch it if you can 🤭)!!!

Someone is not doing a good job in highlighting our lab citizens' awards, so here is the belated congratulations to our rockstar postdoc Harry for being selected as one of 20 PMSE Future Faculty class members! He also gave a talk earlier today at the PMSE symposium at the ACS Fall 2025 meeting!

A little bit of an early sneak peek, but Tim is giving ANOTHER talk on the topic of organic electronics - applications in sensing also in Hall D, Room 4, but on Wednesday! The podium presentation will start at 10:00 AM, so grab a coffee before the talk starts and enjoy it nicely!

Note that Molly's presentation in the afternoon is held at 3:00 PM, and Tim's presentation will be held in Room 147A at 4:50 PM. More polymers, more materials, more fun for every chemist! We all look forward to seeing great attendance in the talks there tomorrow!!!

To conclude the day, our awesome boss Tim will give his Arthur C. Cope Award presentation regarding organic chemistry in materials design - an expanding universe of opportunities. If you are doing research in the "materialverse" world, you definitely don't want to miss this talk! Say hi to him too!

We reconvene in the afternoon with more cool chemistry from our 5th year grad student Molly regarding the development of cost-effective emissive porous benzoxazine polymers, many of which are utilized in the lab. If you are looking for inspiration for cheap materials, go see her in Room 3, Hall D!

Then, at 10:40 AM, our other postdoc Harry will give a talk about n-type conducting polymers as new materials for ultrasensitive hydrogen detection in Room 5, Hall D. If you want to hear more about our electronic and soft materials, go catch him and get ready for the excitement he brings over to DC!

📒: It is a BUSY day for the🦞's in the ACS Fall 2025 tomorrow! At 9:55 AM in room 207B, our postdoc Chi-Hsien is kicking us off with her podium presentation under the title "Development of a novel colorimetric assay for N-nitrosodimethylamine detection in aqueous solution." See you there for the fun!

🆕: A long-awaited introduction from last week! We welcome Alberto, our new exchange graduate student from Italy. He graduated from the University of Parma in Chem. Sci. & Tech. and currently pursues his Master’s degree in Industrial Chemistry there, working in the Dalcanale group. Enjoy the stay!

📎: A belated introduction, but here it is for a good Friday! Robert is a rising junior who joined our lab this winter, working with Ashton since then. He was born and raised in St Lucie, FL and is currently pursuing his major in DMSE with a minor in Chemistry. Welcome (a little bit delayed though)!

🏖️📷: With the fall commencing soon, we gathered earlier today for a farewell and welcome party! Our tradition of giving farewell speeches continues with the superstar visiting undergrads while we welcome Nathan and our visiting grad students into the lab. Tech Square is amazing as always!

Our postdoc Maryam Alsufyani also got highlighted a few days ago as a recipient of the prestigious MIT IBK Research Award for her proposal "Detection of Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Water using Turn-ON Fluorescent Dyes." We are so proud of her! ibk.mit.edu/news/dr-mary...

Next, we welcome our new visiting graduate student, Andrea Minaya, from @ethz.ch! She earned her undergrad degree in MechE, developing NO2 sensors based on carbon nanotubes. Prior to joining our lab, she spent an exchange year @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social and interned at Porsche & 8inks. Welcome!

It's August 8, a palindrome day (8/8 = 100%!!!), a great time to welcome some new lab members! First, we welcome back our postdoc Nathan after a six-month tenure working with our former alumni, Prof. Grace Han. Nathan will conduct some great work in a cool project - stay tuned!

... graduate students Rina and Jennifer, and our logistics master Brian! We look forward to seeing Charles's journey after his tenure in the lab and wish him all the best in his future career!