Professor Rachel Segalman

Edward Noble Kramer Professor of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Materials
& Warren G. and Katherine S. Schlinger Department Chair of Chemical Engineering
University of California, Santa Barbara

From 2004-2014, Segalman was a Professor of Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories where she was also the Division Director for Materials Science. In 2014, she moved to UC Santa Barbara to be the Kramer Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials and became Department Chair of Chemical Engineering in 2015. In 2018 she also became the Associate Director of the UT/UCSB/LBL EFRC: Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems. She is the co-editor of the Annual Reviews of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and an associate editor of ACS Macro Letters. Among other awards, Segalman received the E.O. Lawrence Prize from the Department of Energy, the Andy Acrivos Award for Professional Progress from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Journal of Polymer Science Innovation Award, and the Dillon Medal from the American Physical Society. She is also a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

Segalman is a founding organizer of the National ChemE Seminar Series featuring future faculty and the diversity of the discipline, in the elected Chair-line for the Division of Polymer Physics in the American Physical Society, on the DOE Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC), a co-author of the recent National Academies study, “Chemical Engineering: Challenges and Opportunities in the 21st Century, and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Materials Research Society.

Segalman’s research involves controlling the hierarchical structure and thermodynamics of energy-relevant polymers including polyelectrolytes and semiconducting and bioinspired polymers. This includes a desire to understand the molecular-scale design rules and synthesis that lead to self-assembly and mesoscale architectures that then control macroscopic properties such as ionic, thermal and electronic conductivity as well as surface activity. Applications of relevance include battery electrolytes and binders, semiconducting polymer devices, separation membranes, and bioinspired polymers for applications ranging from marine anti-fouling coatings to next-generation photoresists. She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas (1998), a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara (2002), and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France in 2003.