The Kroo Group’s project, “Mechanical Tuning of Porous Materials using Polymeric Fluids,” has been recommended for funding by the Committee on the Petroleum Research Fund under the Doctoral New Investigator program.
Thank you to reviewers for your time and to the program officers (Dr. Laura Fernandez) for your support of our lab.
We hosted George Degen from Georgia Tech for the PSE department seminar, “Mussels, mucus, and mouthfeel.”
Our collaboration with the Emrick and Russell groups on sheets and filaments at droplet interfaces is published in JACS.
Zhaofeng Peng received an Outstanding Poster Award for PocketCaBER and PocketDoS at IUTAM in Beijing.
Laurel gave an invited keynote, “Swimming Polymers,” at the IUTAM symposium at Peking University.
Thank you to Professor Guang Chen and Professor Yi Man for your invitation and for hosting. And congratulations to doctoral student Yoon-Je (Andy) Choi for all your hard work to get so quickly to the intriguing and rigorous results on how to control swimming polymers for task-switching in the first year of your PhD!
Zhaofeng Peng, Lucas Warwaruk and collaborators introduce low-cost open-source tools for extensional rheometry and teaching.
We welcomed Annelise (Annie) Busch from the University of Virginia and Rajdeep Saha, joining from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, for summer research. Parker Cole continued his research from the spring.
A week of machine-shop work, circuits and sensors, optics, rheology and microfluidics brought together PhD and undergraduate students.
Laurel presented “Flow-Programmed Materials: Building Molecular Architecture via Stretching Flow Sequences” at Mount Holyoke College.
Laurel gave an invited SoFLivMat seminar at Yale University. Thank you to Profs. Amir Pahlavan and Bauyrzhan Primkulov for hosting.
Laurel presented Andy’s work, “A Purcell-swimming robot in Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids: beyond velocity-maximization objectives,” at USNCTAM in Pasadena.
Thanks to Professors Gwen Elfring and Eric Shaqfeh for the invitation.
“Modulating Viscoelasticity and Live Cell Response with Fibrillar Peptide Polymers” discusses synthetic fibrillar peptide hydrogels.
Laurel gave an invited lecture on flow programming of polymeric liquids.
Laurel completed her first year of teaching at UMass Amherst, covering fluid mechanics in PSE 604 in the fall and rheology in PSE 704 in the spring, two core polymer engineering courses. Student feedback highlighted hands-on learning, connections to real research, and support for questions. One PSE 604 student wrote, “I want to express my gratitude for Dr. Kroo’s kindness and her continuous effort to support her students’ learning.”
Laurel presented “Flow Programming of Polymers” at the PSE 60th Reunion at UMass Amherst. Across the two-day celebration, it was wonderful to meet so many inspiring alumni and hear from PSE alumna and former NASA astronaut Cady Coleman.
Andy Choi, Sai Srivatsa Kumar Ganugapati, Clara Middleton, Zhaofeng Peng and Sara Watson completed their candidacy requirements.
Andy presented the poster “Linking the gap between Purcell swimming robot and Taylor’s inextensible sheet model: beyond velocity-maximization objectives.”
Zhaofeng presented “3D-Printed Frugal Science Tools for Capillary-Driven Extensional Rheometry” at the inaugural CNS Graduate Student Research Symposium.
Laurel presented “Flow Programming of Viscoelastic Colloidal Suspensions” and chaired the “Fluids I” session at the APS Global Physics Summit in Denver. Thank you to Professor Irmgard Bischofberger for the invitation to chair.
A collaboration with colleagues from Laurel’s MIT postdoctoral work examines bacterial-cellulose doping to improve the spinnability of cellulose-based textile waste.
Laurel presented a poster on building molecular architecture via stretching-flow sequences in Ventura, California.
The group gathered for the PSE Santos Go Banquet.
Laurel gave a research seminar in Chemical Engineering at UMass Amherst.
Andy Choi, Sai Srivatsa Kumar Ganugapati, Zhaofeng Peng, Clara Middleton and Sara Watson joined the group in its first semester.
Laurel presented “Printability and Rheology of Colloidal Inks under High-Frequency Pulsed Strain Histories” in Santa Fe, with Rishabh More, Tri Tuladhar and Gareth McKinley.
Laurel presented “Various Intriguing Problems in Complex Fluids and Rheology of Adaptive Matter” to the UMass Physics department.
Laurel served as a breakout discussion leader and reporter at the “Materials that Learn” workshop. She also reviewed the workshop proceedings, published in 2026.
The group launched in the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering at UMass Amherst.
Laurel presented “A unifying perspective on measuring transient planar extensional viscosity from exponential shear” at the CECAM workshop at the Monash University Prato Centre in Prato, Italy. The talk took place during Laurel's transition from MIT to UMass Polymer Science and Engineering. Laurel presented her postdoc work with her advisor (prof. Gareth McKinley) in a part 1/part 2 series in Italy -- just a few weeks before the Kroo group’s launch.
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