We’re excited to announce that Mengfei Huang—a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst—was awarded a Pflaumer Honors for Innovation award at the Eastern Coatings Show (ECS) for her research on methylene malonate monomers.

The awards honor and recognize the top two technical papers presented at the show, which took place May 14–15 in Atlantic City.

Huang’s winning paper is entitled, “Synthesis of High-Performance UV Curable Crosslinked Coating Films via Grafting of HEMA Functionalized Methylene Malonates.” It proposes a new method for synthesizing UV-curable, water-based emulsion polymers and polymer dispersions using methylene malonates as a key component.

Huang is a third-year PhD candidate in UMass Amherst’s Department of Chemical Engineering. She researches functional polymers and novel monomers, including UV-curable and functional latex coatings, inorganic and organic nanoparticle encapsulation and novel emulsion polymers.

To learn more about this honor, read our latest press release.