Hu Awarded the John and Nancy Harrison Legacy Graduate Fellowship

Xiaolei Hu, a fourth-year chemistry doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University, is pioneering new techniques to create eco-friendly polymers used in industrial applications such as paints, coatings, adhesives and sealants.

Hu’s novel approach to improve emulsion polymerization relies on environmentally conscious reaction conditions, including the use of light, water and a water-soluble dye, offering a promising pathway to greener polymer production. The new method — light-driven mini-emulsion atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) — provides precise control over the resulting polymer structure. The method expands the scope of polymers that can be created using emulsion polymerization.

As a master’s student at Concordia University, Hu focused on controlled polymer synthesis. Inspired by the work of CMU’s Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, a leading expert in polymer chemistry, Hu applied to Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Chemistry doctoral program to work with Matyjaszewski’s renowned Polymer Group.

“I was really excited about his group’s research,” Hu said. Matyjaszewski’s development of the Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP) method, a widely used process for controlled radical polymerization, significantly influenced Hu’s research.

“Hu’s contributions to photoinduced atom transfer radical polymerization (photoATRP) are groundbreaking, such as developing oxygen-tolerant red and near-infrared light-mediated ATRP and enhancing near-infrared light-driven ATRP for scalable, well-controlled polymerization,” said Matyjaszewski, the J.C. Warner University Professor of Natural Sciences. “His work on photoATRP has opened new avenues for more efficient and environmentally friendly polymerization processes.”

Matyjaszewski praised Hu’s expertise in synthetic polymer chemistry, photochemistry and emulsion polymerization. He noted that Hu’s innovative contributions could have far-reaching applications, potentially enabling the sustainable and cost-effective production of polymers.

Hu also has contributed new ways to modify nucleic acids and RNA with polymers. Notably, he pioneered a method using methylene blue, a common dye, as a photocatalyst activated by near-infrared light, enabling polymerization in a high-throughput manner at ambient conditions.

Subha Das, an associate professor who collaborates with Hu in bioconjugate research, commended Hu’s ability to tackle complex challenges in polymer chemistry.

“Hu’s work in enabling near-infrared polymerization at ambient conditions opens up new possibilities for modifying small quantities of biomolecules, a crucial step in advancing high-throughput screening methods,” said Das, who nominated Hu for the fellowship.

“This is transformational as it eliminates tremendous challenges to biomolecule and nucleic acid polymer hybrid materials and heralds the ability to obtain small amounts of modified nucleic acids fairly readily and screen them using high throughput approaches,” Das said. “Hu’s work has already directly been helpful to efforts in my own lab to modify DNA and RNA with polymers, and he is now advising as we move to automate high throughput polymerization reactions.”

Hu’s research has led to significant publications, including two recent papers on ATRP in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). He gave an oral presentation at the American Chemical Society’s Fall 2024 Meeting and contributed to organizing a symposium on transition metal catalysis at the ACS Fall 2023 conference.

“Publishing the work is one of the most efficient ways to summarize what you have done in research,” Hu said. “It's definitely rewarding to see your hard work pay off but also to see the results summarized in this precise and scientific way, so that people can be inspired by your work and continue to innovate in this field.”

Looking ahead, Hu is focused on continuing to refine ATRP techniques to make the system more robust.

“We’re working to optimize the reaction conditions and mechanisms to make this technology practical for diverse applications,” he said.

Hu hopes to advance both the science of polymer chemistry and its applications with a vision of a more sustainable future for polymer production.

For his efforts, Hu’s innovative work earned him the John and Nancy Harrison Legacy Graduate Fellowship in Chemistry and Biochemistry. The award recognizes a graduate student’s academic excellence and leadership potential, providing up to $3,000 to supplement his stipend and support his research activities.