Tom received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2017 and worked as a researcher at the Adolphe Merkle Institute at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland from 2016-2018 under the mentorship of Prof. Michael Mayer. His doctoral research focused on energy transduction from gradients of various species across lipid and polymer membranes in bio-inspired systems. Before that, he graduated with departmental honors in chemistry from Northwestern University in 2012, where he researched organocatalysis in Prof. Karl Scheidt’s group.

 

Tom received a Postdoc.Mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation to work on stimuli-responsive hydrogels in the Aizenberg group. He remains on the lookout for interesting ways in which nature solves problems that humans share.

 

Awards and Honors

• Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship (2018)
• University of Michigan Cellular Biotechnology Training Program (2014-2016)
• University of Michigan Rackham Conference Travel Grants (2014, 2015, 2017)
• Northwestern University Chemistry Department Scholar Award (2012)