Envisioning the Future
Chemical Engineering
Yueh-Lin “Lynn” Loo
Title: Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and General Dynamics Endowed Faculty Fellow, University of Texas at Austin
Education: Ph.D., M.A., Chemical Engineering, Princeton University; B.S.E., Chemical Engineering and B.S.E., Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
Age: 31
Dr. Lynn Loo spends much of her time envisioning the future: A TV that you can roll up and drop into a carry-on bag for a long flight. Kitchen wallpaper that can be changed with the flick of a wrist. Loo’s research in the emerging field of plastic electronics could help turn those dreams into reality. Plastic electronics use organic and plastic materials to create electronic devices. Much of the work remains firmly in the world of science fiction, but practical applications aren’t far away. The technology would offer advantages over current silicon-based technology because it is lighter and more flexible.
Loo credits her colleagues and administrators at the University of Texas at Austin, where she’s been since 2001, with providing the necessary support, encouragement and infrastructure. “You need someone to pick you up when you’re down,” she says. “Sounding boards are important.”
UT’s atmosphere and its top-ranked chemical engineering department were two of the factors that led Loo to Texas after earning her Ph.D. from Princeton University. She worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey for a year as a researcher, but chose the academic path so she could run a research program, as well as interact with students regularly. In fall 2005, she taught an upper-division course on polymers.
At Bell Labs, she invented nanotransfer printing, an environmentally safe way of putting electric circuits on plastic.
