Craig J. Hawker

Professor Craig J. Hawker is the Director, Dow Materials Institute; Director, California Nanosystems Institute; Alan and Ruth Heeger Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies; Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Clarke Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Craig began his professional career in 1990 as a Queen Elizabeth II Research fellow at the University of Queensland before being hired by IBM in 1993 to work at the Almaden Research Center. Hawker's original inventions have legitimized macromolecular engineering as an intellectually robust field of study, with the breadth and impact of his work being truly exceptional. His creative implementation of fundamental synthetic organic concepts to increasingly complex macromolecular systems have revolutionized the field of synthetic polymer chemistry. From the preparation of dendritic macromolecules to the development of living radical polymerization, his work has allowed the resolution limits in microelectronics devices to be overcome while also introducing small molecule click chemistry to macromolecular materials applications, and developing polymer nanoparticles as medical agents for cardiovascular imaging and human clinical trials.