2/27/2026
Ayaulym Abilova and Ben Chiu, both Ph.D. students within the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, are the inaugural recipients of the PPG-MRL Collaborative Graduate Research Awards. The program funds two graduate students from different research groups to work together for a year on a student-initiated collaborative seed project.
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Written by Lauren Laws
Research starts with more than an idea. Sometimes it begins with a conversation long before that idea has taken root. Peers discuss, previous work is shared, and connections are made. From multi-university teams to specialists within the same department, innovations are often born from collaboration.
A new program funded by the PPG Foundation is focusing on the importance of this dynamic.
Ayaulym Abilova and Ben Chiu, both Ph.D. students within the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, are the inaugural recipients of the PPG-MRL Collaborative Graduate Research Awards. The program funds two graduate students from different research groups to work together for a year on a student-initiated collaborative seed project. The team will additionally receive $7,500 to support their research.
Abilova’s and Chiu’s research will focus on gelation of high-performance materials with the intention to increase control over polymer network formation for fine-tuned durability and stability of coatings, adhesives, sealants, and more. Further information on their research, as well as their motivations for this work, can be found below.
PPG and the PPG Foundation aim to protect and beautify the world. In their partnership with Illinois, the company and foundation supports students preparing for in-demand careers that will shape global innovation and cutting-edge technologies in areas such as polymer science and engineering, chemical engineering, materials science and synthetic organic chemistry.
Many high-performance materials, such as protective and decorative coatings, adhesives, and sealants, start as liquids and solidify via gelation into three-dimensional, crosslinked polymer networks. Despite their widespread use, gelation is still difficult to predict and control because it requires tracking, in real time, how the reaction, network architecture, and viscoelastic response evolve across relevant length and time scales. Having more precise control over polymer network formation would allow the manufacturing and design of materials that can be directly tuned to have desired thermal stability, viscoelastic properties, and fracture resistance.
Our research focuses on gelation as the defining liquid-to-solid transformation that enables crosslinking-based technologies. A central idea is that the mechanical response during curing reflects coupled elastic and viscous contributions. Building on rheological frameworks developed in the Rogers Lab, we propose that as connectivity increases toward a system-spanning network, solid-like elasticity emerges while liquid-like flow persists. By quantifying how these contributions evolve with conversion and network topology, we aim to connect curing kinetics, microstructure, and the onset of macroscopic elasticity. To tackle this intrinsic complexity, we will integrate theory, coarse-grained molecular simulations, and experiments. By synthesizing polymer networks with different architectures, we will characterize their respective unique rheological signatures. Simulations modeling will then be used to link the rheological signatures to molecular level features to build structure-response-property relationships for polymer networks.
"My motivation comes from vat photopolymerization 3D printing, where predicting and controlling the liquid-to-solid transition during printing tests is a persistent challenge that directly impacts print fidelity. Conversations about collaboration sparked at an on-campus ACS Poly/PMSE Symposium were both refreshing and eye-opening. I am genuinely happy for the opportunity to collaborate on these complex issues, and I am optimistic about our approach, which brings together complementary strengths: controlled photochemistry and rheology to measure conversion and viscoelastic evolution, paired with coarse-grained simulations that can resolve otherwise hidden network features and map them onto rheological signatures.”
"Aya is an ambitious and rigorous scientist who doggedly tackles any problem put in front of her. She is unusually persistent and has quickly developed expertise in characterizing the time and temperature-dependent behavior mechanical transitions in polymers. She has a knack for finding partners to help understand complex systems, and her collaborative spirit elevates work of everyone she encounters. Aya’s has made rapid progress in her first two years at Illinois and I am excited to see what she and Ben accomplish!”
"I met Aya at the ACS POLY/PMSE Symposium, where I found we both were interested in polymer network rheology, and it was really motivating to meet another PhD student that worked on similar work. I had been working on first principle models to predict the rheological response of polymer networks, and I realized Aya was working on very similar experimental systems to what I was trying to model. As someone who only does theory and simulation, I always learn a lot talking to experimentalists such as Aya, as they often have fresh perspectives on my research problems. When I saw the posting, I thought Aya would be a natural collaborator, as we were interested in many similar problems, and our respective work in experiment and computation worked well together!
Together, we aim to gain a clearer, more predictive picture of gelation, that advances fundamental understanding while enabling more reliable, design-driven processing of photo-crosslinking-based materials.”
"Ben is profoundly curious. His enthusiasm for learning and thinking about science not only propels his own research, but also makes him gregarious in his pursuit of collaboration. His work on the structure and rheology of polymer networks is an exciting new direction for our group that benefits from his adventurous spirit as a scholar. It also puts him in an ideal position to bring together a larger team of researchers on campus - that he is doing this organically is impressive, and makes me excited to see how much he accomplishes at Illinois and beyond.”
Alexa Kuenstler is an Illinois Grainger Engineering assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Charles Sing is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is the Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and is affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory. Sing holds the James M. and Karen S. Morris Faculty Scholar position.