Perry Research Group

News and Announcements

2026 | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014
May 11th, 2026
Dr. Alaleh Vaghef-Koodehi

Congratulations to Dr. Alaleh Vaghef-Koodehi on having been awarded an UMass Amherst Postdoctoral Research Organization Professional Development Award!

May 11th, 2026
Dr. Abhik Manna

Congratulations to Dr. Abhik Manna on having been awarded an UMass Amherst Postdoctoral Research Organization Professional Development Award!

May 8th, 2026
Dr. Abhik Manna

Congratulations to Dr. Abhik Manna on having been selected to attend the Future Faculty Workshop being held at Florida State University!

May 6th, 2026
Bakthavachalam Kannadasan

Baktha Kannadasan presented a CBI Chalk Talk on Addressing Challenges in Structural Biology Through Microfluidics.

May 5th, 2026
Greg Donovan

Congratulations to Greg Donovan, former group alumnus on having defended his PhD dissertation on "Biosensor-enabled High-Throughput Analysis of Terpene Synthesis," work that he in the lab of Prof. Jerome Fox in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder!

May 4th, 2026
Adhithi Varadarajan

Congratulations to Adhithi Varadarajan on having defended her honors thesis!

May 4th, 2026
Xianci Zeng Graduation Gift

Congratulations to Dr. Xianci Zeng for successfully defending her PhD dissertation on Bioinspired Strategies for the Encapsulation and Stabilization of Biomacromolecules! Dr. Zeng is the 10th PhD student to graduate from the Perry Lab!

May 1st, 2026
Adhithi Varadarajan

Congratulations to Adhithi Varadarajan who will be joining the PM Group as a Process Engineer after graduation!

April 29th, 2026
Dr. Jussara Alves Penido

Welcome back to Dr. Jussara Alves Penido who is now joining our group as a postdoctoral researcher!

April 27th, 2026
Isaac Ramírez Marrero

Congratulations to Isaac Ramírez Marrero on the publication of his review article on design rules in polyelectrolyte complexes!

"Fundamentals and Design Rules of Polyelectrolyte Complex Materials: A Comprehensive Review," I.A. Ramírez Marrero, S.L. Perry, Chemical Reviews, (2026) (accepted). [PDF]

April 24th, 2026
Kiersten O'Connell

Congratulations to Kiersten O'Connell who will studying abroad in Beijing, China this fall!

April 22nd, 2026
Maille O'Neil

Welcome to Maille O'Neil, sophomore Chemical Engineering student who is joining the lab to work on polymer-surfactant complex coacervates.

April 17th, 2026
Adhithi Varadarajan

Adhithi Varadarajan presented her honors thesis research on Chymotrypsin Activity in Peptide-Based Coacervates at the Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference!

April 17th, 2026
Mazin Hussein

Mazin Hussein presented his honors thesis research on Design and Fabrication of an Electrochemical Cell for X-ray Synchrotron Studies at the Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference!

April 17th, 2026
Rayyan Khan

Rayyan Khan presented his research on Investigating the Effects of Salt Concentration and pH on Biopolymer Coacervation at the Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference!

April 17th, 2026
Jonas Theis

Welcome to Jonas Theis, a first-year Chemical Engineering student who is joining the lab to work on the encpasulation and stabilization of biomacromolecules in complex coacervates.

April 13th, 2026
Mayayi Izzo

Congratulations to Mayayi Izzo on having been awarded a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!

April 13th, 2026
Logan Chen

Congratulations to Logan Chen on having been awarded honorable mention in the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship competition!

April 12th, 2026
2026 Electrically Actuated Valves

Congratulations to Logan Chen, Sarthak Saha, and all of our collaborators on the publication of our new paper that uses electrically-actuated valves to facilitate sample preparation for protein crystallography!

"LEGO-Inspired Electrically-Actuated Microfluidics for On-Chip Protein Crystallization and In-Situ X-ray Crystallography," S. Saha, L. Chen, G. Budziszewski, S. Koprek, K. Seifert, A.E. Cohen, S. Russi, S.E.J. Bowman, S.L. Perry, Lab on a Chip, (2026) (accepted). [PDF]

April 8th, 2026
Gabriel Stevens

Welcome to Gabriel Stevens, a sophomore in Chemical Engineering who is joining the lab to work on the encpasulation and stabilization of biomacromolecules in complex coacervates.

April 6th, 2026
Faviola Villariny-Rosado

Congratulations to Faviola Villariny-Rosado on having passed her prospectus! She is now an official PhD Candidate!

March 30th, 2026
Mayayi Izzo

Congratulations to Mayayi Izzo, who will be joining the PhD program in Chemical Engineering at Vanderbilt University in the fall!

March 28th, 2026
Arjun Iyer

Congratulations to Arjun Iyer, who will be joining the PhD program in Chemical Engineering at the University of Virginia in the fall!

March 23rd, 2026
2026 Copolymers and rHg/Tg

Congratulations to Isaac Ramírez Marrero, Emily Ng, and all of our collaborators on the publication of our new paper on the effects of copolymer chemistry on the glass transitions in polyelectrolyte complexes!

"Effect of Copolymer Chemistry on the Humidity- and Temperature-Dependent Mechanical Properties and Structure of Polyelectrolyte Complexes," I.A. Ramírez Marrero, E. Ng, N. Kaiser, B. von Vacano, R. Konradi, A.J. Crosby, S.L. Perry, Macromolecules, 2026, (accepted). [PDF]

March 18th, 2026
Prof. Sarah Perry

Prof. Perry gave an invited talk on Glass Transitions in Polyelectrolyte Complex Materials at the APS Global Physics Summit in Denver, CO.

March 13th, 2026
Diwakaran Rathinam Palaniswamy

Congratulations to Diwakaran Rathinam Palaniswamy on having been awarded 2nd place for his GRASS talk on Microfluidic Platform for On-Demand Synthesis of Ultrapure RNA with Site-Specific Modifications at the Inaugural Chemical Engineering Research Day!

March 13th, 2026
Dr. Abhik Manna

Dr. Abhik Manna presented a poster on Microfluidic System for Site-specific Labelling of RNA at the Inaugural Chemical Engineering Research Day.

March 13th, 2026
Manu Menezes

Manu Menezes and Dr. Alaleh Vaghef Koodehi presented a poster on Towards Scalable RNA Purification Using Electrokinetic Microfluidics at the Inaugural Chemical Engineering Research Day.

March 13th, 2026
Faviola Villariny-Rosado

Faviola Villariny-Rosado presented a poster on Exploring the Electrochemical Properties of Polyelectrolyte Complexes at the Inaugural Chemical Engineering Research Day.

March 13th, 2026
Prof. Sarah Perry

Prof. Perry gave a seminar on Polyelectrolyte Complex Materials in the Department of Chemistry at Georgia State University.

March 10th, 2026
Faviola Villariny-Rosado

Faviola Villariny-Rosado presented a poster on Exploring the Electrochemical Properties of Polyelectrolyte Complexes at the Daniel J. Riccio Jr. College of Engineering Graduate Research Symposium.

March 9th, 2026
2026 Backbone and Chemistry

Congratulations to Isaac Ramírez Marrero, Louisa Coughlin, Emily Ng, and all of our collaborators on the publication of our new paper on the effects of polymer chain length, charged group, and backbone chemistry on the glass transitions in polyelectrolyte complexes!

"Developing Design Rules for Polyelectrolyte Complex Materials: Role of Polyelectrolyte Length, Charged Group, and Backbone," I.A. Ramírez Marrero, R. Ghosh, L.M. Coughlin, W.W. Wong, E. Ng, E. Kellner, M. Redder, N. Kaiser, B. von Vacano, R. Konradi, E.B. Coughlin, S.L. Perry, Macromolecules, (2026), 59(8), 5017-5030. [PDF]

March 8th, 2026
Dr. Júlia Bonesso Sabadini

Welcome back to Dr. Júlia Bonesso Sabadini who is now joining our group as a postdoctoral researcher!

February 24th, 2026
Dr. Sarthak Saha

Congratulations to Dr. Sarthak Saha on being awarded the 2024 Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Best Dissertation Award!

February 24th, 2026
2026 Proteins and Patterning

Congratulations to Arvind Sathyavageeswaran, Mayayi Izzo, Júlia Bonesso Sabadini, Jacob Belden and Umme Habeeba on the publication of their new paper on the effects of peptide sequence on the incorporation of proteins into complex coacervates!

"Tuning Protein Uptake through Charge and Hydrophobicity in Peptide-Based Complex Coacervates," A. Sathyavageeswaran, M. Izzo, J. Bonesso Sabadini, U. Habeeba, J.T. Belden, S.L. Perry, Biomacromolecules, (2026), 27(4), 2795-2806. [PDF]

February 1st, 2026
Xi (Ryan) Hao

Congratulations to Xi (Ryan) Hao, who defended his PhD in Macromolecular Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech in September 2025 and just started a position as an industrial engineer at Uniquetex!

January 29th, 2026
Kiersten O'Connell

Congratulations to Kiersten O'Connell who will be participating in a co-op with Abbvie this spring/summer!

January 20th, 2026
Prof. Sarah Perry

Congratulations to Prof. Perry who was just named the Gary R. Lapidus Professor!

January 19th, 2026
2026 Brushy Nanoparticle Coacervates

Congratulations to Mingjun Zhou and Nick Holmlund on the publication of their new paper on forming complex coacervates using brushy nanoparticles!

"Complex Coacervates of Linear Polymers and Polymer-Grafted Nanoparticles," M. Zhou, N. Homlund, S.L. Perry, M. Santore, Macromolecules, (2026), 59(3), 1679-1693. [PDF]

January 13th, 2026
Allison Barrett

Welcome to Allison Barrett, a first year undergraduate in Chemical Engineering who is joining us to study the effect of complex coacervation on enzyme activity!