Mark Wins NSF Special Creativity Award

When the National Science Foundation recently honored James Mark with a Special Creativity Award, he should not have been surprised. The Distinguished Research Professor of Chemistry has had four similar types of recognition from NSF over a period of 23 years.

The award means that Mark’s current project, “Some Modern Aspects of Elastomer Science and Technology,” will be continued and receive $156,000 in additional funding for each of the two additional years. According to NSF, “the objective of such extensions is to offer the most creative investigators an extended opportunity to attack adventurous, ‘high-risk’ opportunities in the same general research area, but not necessarily covered by the original/current proposal.”

Mark’s research interests include the physical properties of polymeric materials, particularly elastomers (materials that can recover after large deformations). He commented, “The Special Creativity Award will greatly help in getting us into some new areas involving mechanical properties of polymers. Improving the properties of elastomeric materials in particular is of critical importance in a variety of areas from tires on cars, trucks, and planes to drug- delivery systems to implants in the human body.”