Engineering materials deployed in realistic environments (e.g., extreme cold weather, marine environments, biologically active fluids, complex mechanical loads, etc.) routinely fail not from a single dominant stressor but from the compounding effects of environmental extremes in real-world applications. However, many organisms in Nature have evolved hierarchical, multiscale surface architectures and passive self-regulating mechanisms to resist icing, deter biological attachment, and self-repair their structure after mechanical damage. In this talk, I will present two active projects in our research group where we are studying bioinspired physical and chemical mechanisms for adaptation to extreme cold weather and to marine environments. We have developed a large library of natural biomolecules and bioinspired surfaces that inhibit the nucleation of ice (either by depressing the freezing point of aqueous solutions or by inhibiting ice recrystallization) and/or reduce the adhesion of ice to surfaces, and have developed automated high-throughput instrumentation to screen synergistic combinations of natural and bioinspired compounds and accelerate the discovery of new anti-icing materials and strategies. Translating these strategies into synthetic materials design provides new opportunities for climate resilience, energy efficiency, and protection from extreme cold environments across industries, including healthcare, transportation, space heating, and defense.


Bio: Abdon Pena-Francesch is an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan. He leads the BioInspired Materials Lab, an interdisciplinary research group working on materials science, polymer chemistry, and soft matter engineering to develop solutions for healthcare, robotics, and the environment. He obtained his PhD from Penn State University and was a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany. His work has been recognized by multiple awards including the AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award, ACS PMSE Early Investigator Award, ACS PRF New Investigator Award, Materials Today Rising Star Award, MRS Sustainability in Action Award, and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers.