Bencherif Selected as 2021 ACS PMSE Young Investigator
ChE Assistant Professor Sidi A. Bencherif was recently selected as one of the 2021 Young Investigators by the American Chemical Society’s Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (ACS PMSE). This selection recognizes Bencherif’s excellence in polymer research and marks him as an emerging leader in the field.
PMSE Young Investigators are early-career scientists and engineers from academia, national labs, and industry within 7 years of beginning their independent careers. Bencherif, alongside this year’s other Young Investigators, will present his recent research advancements at the PMSE Young Investigator Symposium during the Spring 2022 ACS Meeting. He will also be accepting the award at the venue.
A notable area of Bencherif’s research program so far has been his work on cryogels, a type of hydrogels with unique properties. His lab engineers advanced injectable cryogels for tissue engineering, drug delivery, cell transplantation, and immunotherapy. Taking their research further, Bencherif and his team recently created hypoxia-fighting cryogels to boost antitumor immune cells when subjected to low oxygen tensions. These unique biomaterials provide a unique platform to leverage current and emergent cancer immunotherapies and may expand our understanding of how hypoxia affects immune cells. Bencherif’s work promises exciting applications in biomedicine as well as other fields.