Phillip Taylor

About

Phillip A. Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. After obtaining his B.S.E. and M.S.E. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, he completed a Ph.D. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware under the direction of Professors Arthi Jayaraman and April M. Kloxin. He then conducted his postdoctoral research at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) at Sandia National Laboratories, where he worked with Drs. Gary Grest and Mark Stevens. Prof. Taylor’s research interests include computational materials science, polymer physics, biomaterials, and peptide self-assembly. 

Lab overview

Polymers comprise all aspects of our daily lives, including the biopolymers in our bodies’ tissues such as proteins and DNA, and many of the foods, cosmetics, and plastic packaging that we use daily. To design bio-inspired polymers for medical applications such as drug delivery and tissue engineering, computational approaches offer unique insights into linking molecular-level features and polymer physics to favorable material properties. To that end, the Taylor Lab uses molecular simulations and machine learning to study the structure and dynamics of soft materials. Using computational methods, we engineer multifunctional, soft materials such as polymer networks and nanoparticles. Specific systems of interests include bio-inspired polymeric systems such as dynamic covalent hydrogels, self-assembled and double network hydrogels, and peptide-based polyelectrolyte complexes. Moreover, we use machine learning to develop coarse-grained models to capture the structure and nonlinear rheology of dynamic, self-healing polymeric materials. Our research program guides collaborative, synthesis efforts of responsive soft materials such as hydrogels with controllable, viscoelastic properties and stimuli-responsive nanoparticles.