Julia Kalow (CV)
Dow Chemical Company Associate Professor
Department of Chemistry
Northwestern University
office: Tech M292
phone: (847) 467-4972
email Julia
Photo credit: Jim Prisching
Julia’s research goal is to understand and manipulate polymeric materials through the lens of physical organic chemistry, in particular using light to control polymer synthesis and properties. Her group’s work has been recognized with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, a NSF CAREER award, and the Sloan Research Fellowship. She obtained her BA at Columbia University in 2008, where she studied chemistry and creative writing and performed research in the Leighton group. Following an internship in the medicinal chemistry department at Merck, she pursued graduate studies in the Doyle lab at Princeton University as a NSF predoctoral fellow. She developed asymmetric catalytic fluorinations using a latent source of HF and studied their mechanisms in detail. After completing her PhD in 2013, she joined the Swager lab at MIT as a Ruth L. Kirschstein NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellow. There, she studied the synthesis and self-assembly of novel architectures of conjugated block copolymers, as well as responsive surfactant design for sensing applications. She started her independent career at Northwestern’s Department of Chemistry in July 2016.