Professor Connie Roth Receives NSF Special Creativity Award

Professor Connie Roth is awarded an NSF Special Creativity grant in 2022 for her unique research into polymer material properties at the local nanoscale level. The National Science Foundation (NSF) Special Creativity Award is a two year extension of funding on an existing research grant “to offer the most creative investigators an extended opportunity to attack adventurous, ‘high-risk’ opportunities”. This type of award is rare with historically less than 0.2% of NSF grants receiving such a creativity extension. Dr. Roth’s funding comes from the Polymers Program that is part of the Division of Materials Research at NSF and extends her current NSF grant on the “Role of Interface Interpenetration and Domain Size on Dynamic Coupling Across Dissimilar Polymer Domains”. Dr. Roth’s research program develops and uses unique experimental methods to measure local property changes in polymer materials providing molecular level understanding on how interfaces perturb local dynamics in polymer glasses. This research program also involves a collaboration with Emory’s Carlos Museum characterizing polymer materials used in art conservation.