Jean Duhamel
Director of the Institute for Polymer Research
University of Waterloo
Canada
Biography
After being trained as a chemical engineer in France at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Industries Chimiques, Jean Duhamel obtained in PhD in 1989 under the supervision of Dr. André at the Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine (France). Following a first post-doc at the U. of Toronto (Canada) with Prof. Winnik and a second one at the U. of Pennsylvania (USA) with Prof. Lu, he joined the U. of Waterloo in 1996. Over the past 20+ years, work from his research group has aimed to establish the versatility of pyrene excimer fluorescence or PEF to probe the dynamics, conformation, and interactions of any macromolecule in solution.
Research Interest
Application of fluorescence techniques to characterize chain folding, the associative strength of water- and oil-soluble associative polymers, the interactions between gemini surfactants and DNA, or the associations between associative polymers and colloidal particles