The Bowden group is a highly interdisciplinary research group that works in the overlapping areas of polymer chemistry, medicinal science, surface chemistry, agriculture, and materials science. 

We begin each project by looking for where we can make an impact in a field.  We then design organic materials at the molecular level and synthesize them using a combination of organic chemistry, nanoscience, and polymer chemistry. 

We happily collaborate with a wide variety of people in pharmacy, physics, chemical and biomedical engineering, materials science, and neurosurgery to solve problems that are best addressed by an interdisciplinary approach. 

Our main focus is to use chemistry as a toolbox to solve problems and to develop new synthetic methods.

Recent news and announcements

September 2024: Shanari has her first publication in Macromolecules!  Congrats! (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/epdf/10.1021/acs.macromol.4c00989) 

August 2024: Many good things have happened in the last year including having an excellent summer STTP student working with us this summer, Jett passing his comp exam, and adding Vamsi to our group in January. 

September 2023: I am very excited about some of our recent results. Looking forward to publishing papers to describe them. 

August 2023: We were awarded a grant from the NSF to continue our work with membranes to purify fatty acids and fatty acid esters.  
July 2023: I just returned from Montana State University where I met with our collaborators.  They are doing some great science, I am happy to be working with them.

Spring 2023: Congrats to Nimesh and Arjun for defending their PhD theses!  I am very proud of their work and they are terrific scientists.

July 2022: Wow, I didn't update this for a while!  In the last year James Grace graduated with his Ph.D., Nimesh attended the National Biodiesel Conference on a fellowship and gave a talk there, we published papers, received grants, and did some great science.