Date/Time Date(s) - 14/10/2026 - 16/10/20266:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Categories
featuring
Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering
Cornell University
This series of presentations will provide an overview of the progression from the design of nanomaterials for oncological applications, through the use of block copolymer self-assembly to create high-performance ultrafiltration membranes, to the development of soft matter enabled quantum metamaterials. Together, these presentations will illustrate how control over materials structure, self-assembly, and processing can lead to new functional properties and technologies. Prof. Wiesner’s work spans applications in cancer diagnosis and therapy, membrane-based separations and energy-related technologies, and emerging quantum materials and devices, while highlighting both fundamental scientific questions and opportunities for technological translation.
Professor Wiesner will present three lectures:
Evening public lecture:
From Nanotechnology to Nanomedicine: Nanomaterials for Oncology.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026 – 6:30 – 7:30 pm – ABB 102
Block Copolymer Self-Assembly enabled Ultrafiltration Membranes.
Thursday, October 15, 2026 – 2:30 – 3:30 pm – JHE 264
Soft Matter enabled Quantum Metamaterials.
Friday, October 16, 2026 – 2:30 – 3:30 pm – ABB 102
Speaker bio:
Ulrich (Uli) Wiesner studied Chemistry at the University of Mainz, Germany, and UC Irvine, CA. He gained his Ph.D. in 1991 in Physical Chemistry with work at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P), Mainz, on holographic information storage in polymer liquid crystals. After a two-year postdoc at E.S.P.C.I. in Paris, France, on local dynamics-mechanical property correlations in polyesters, he returned to the MPI-P in 1993. In 1998 he finished his Habilitation with work on block copolymers under oscillatory shear and block copolymer ionomers and received tenure as an MPI-P staff member. He joined the Cornell University, NY, Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) faculty in 1999 as a tenured Associate Professor, became a Full Professor in 2005, and since 2008 is the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering. At Cornell, he holds secondary appointments (field membership) in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE), Biomedical Engineering (BME), Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB), and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Since January of 2023 he is also an inaugural faculty member of the multi-college Department of Design Tech at Cornell and Professor of Design Tech. Since his arrival at Cornell, he has worked at the interface between polymer science and inorganic/solid-state chemistry with the goal to generate multifunctional nanomaterials for applications including energy conversion and storage, clean water, and nanomedicine. From 2015-2021 he was the co-director of the MSKCC-Cornell Center for Translation of Cancer Nanomedicine (MC2TCN), one of six Centers for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE) funded by the NCI (https://www.cancer.gov/sites/ocnr/research/alliance/ccne).
Abstracts:
From Nanotechnology to Nanomedicine: Nanomaterials for Oncology
The miniaturization of materials and their functions has not only revolutionized the microelectronics industry but has also allowed to engineer multifunctional materials down to a length scale where they can directly interact with and modulate important molecular processes in biology. At the end of the 90’ and early 2000’s this vision started to fuel immense excitement and activity in the area of nanomedicine in general, and in oncology in particular. Cancer is a very complex disease which despite advances in diagnostic and therapeutic (i.e., theranostic) approaches is still too often leading to patient suffering and mortality. This talk will provide an overview of more than 20 years of highly interdisciplinary and collaborative research by the Wiesner group at Cornell University on nanomaterials for oncological applications. After providing an introduction into this field, the development of an optically detectable nanomaterials platform will be discussed that over the years has been translated into multiple diagnostic and therapeutic human clinical trials with cancer patients. It will be shown how this has enabled surgeons to make better educated decisions during surgery based on optical cues associated with malignant tissues. It will also be demonstrated that based on the near-molecular designs, therapeutic nanomaterials reduce side effects of cytotoxic drugs when administered to cancer patients. Finally, the talk will end with a discussion of very recent and exciting studies suggesting entirely novel approaches to cancer therapy. In this work nanomaterials, without any associated cytotoxic drugs, are shown to convert terribly difficult to treat “cold” (immune-excluded) tumor microenvironments (TMEs) of solid tumors into “hot” (immune-stimulated) TMEs rendering these tumors treatable with immunotherapies (ITs). The talk will end with a discussion of the promises and challenges associated with efforts to make such approaches available to the broader cancer patient community.
Block Copolymer Self-Assembly enabled Ultrafiltration Membranes
Ultrafiltration (UF) membrane technologies to provide clean drinking water or biopharmaceutical product separations are of immense importance. This presentation introduces a new class of UF membranes based on a combination of block copolymer self-assembly (SA) with non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS). The resulting SNIPS derived membranes consist of a ~100 nm thick top separation layer with a dense array of periodically ordered mesopores atop an asymmetric substructure with a gradient of pore sizes from mesopores at the top (right underneath the separation layer) to large macropores at the bottom. As a result of narrow pore size distributions and high pore densities in the separation layer, SNIPS membranes achieve a combination of high-resolution and high-flux ultrafiltration profiles outcompeting traditional homopolymer NIPS derived UF membranes. The talk will focus on SNIPS membranes derived from poly(isoprene-b-styrene-b-4-vinyl-pyridine) ABC triblock terpolymers with improved mechanical properties relative to their poly(styrene-b-4-vinyl-pyridine) diblock copolymer counterparts and their formation mechanisms. Results will show how molecular architecture on one end and processing parameters on the other determine final membrane structure of both top separation layer and substructure. This will include in-situ grazing incidence small angle x-ray scattering experiments at Cornell’s High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) to elucidate structure evolution in the top separation layer during solvent evaporation steps, as well as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy on static samples at different concentrations in order to identify the role of different blocks in the structure formation process. Discussion will include block copolymer – homopolymer mixtures as well as block copolymer – block copolymer mixtures in the membrane dope in order to broaden the property profiles of SNIPS derived all organic membranes. The formation of organic-inorganic hybrid membranes via the inclusion of inorganic components in the dope, as well as of purely asymmetric inorganic membranes via subsequent thermal processing steps will be discussed in order to extend the scope of the work towards applications, e.g. in energy conversion and storage or catalysis.
Soft Matter enabled Quantum Metamaterials
The field of soft matter enabled quantum materials is an emerging research area at the interface between soft and condensed matter science and engineering. This talk will highlight the immense academic as well as technological promise associated with this class of materials and devices. Examples will be provided of research by the Wiesner group at Cornell demonstrating that polymer solution-based and self-assembly induced mesoscale structure dictates electronic behavior via modification of fundamental, quantum level characteristics, leading to quantum metamaterials with property profiles far exceeding those observed in the bulk. For the case of mesoporous superconducting niobium nitride-type thin films, it will be shown how granular superconductivity arises as a result of defects and disorder in the materials. Next, the talk will outline how solution-based processing approaches enable cost-effective pathways to such quantum metamaterials with a range of accessible form factors, from thin films and devices all the way to additive manufacturing / three-dimensional (3D) printing derived structures for bulk materials applications. Finally, the presentation will describe the associated opportunity space for future research and education, as well as challenges that need to be overcome to translate research findings into technology and innovation by understanding the role of defects on materials properties.