Chemist Dr. Charalampos Pappas has joined livMatS as a new Junior Research Group Leader. Over the next few months, he will establish his research group in the interdisciplinary environment of livMatS. Pappa’s research focuses on dynamic chemical networks.
Pappas examines the pathways and mechanisms that allow living systems to perform complex functions. He aims to develop synthetic chemical systems that can alter their properties in response to changing situations and thus form the basis for adaptive, metabolic and energized materials. For this, Pappas designs self-organizing chemical networks utilizing building blocks such as Peptides, Nucleobases and fully synthetic chemical compounds. He addresses the question of how systems chemistry can empower soft matter systems with longevity and adaptivity and can act as the catalyst to bridge the gap between fundamental science and first-time applications.
Pappas studied Chemistry in Ioannina/Greece, Glasgow/UK, New York/USA and Groningen/The Netherlands. In 2016 he completed his doctorate at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, where he studied the self-assembly propensity of short peptide amphiphiles. He spent half of his Ph.D. at the Advanced Science Research Centre at the City University of New York. In 2017, he returned to Europe with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship to work at the University of Groningen on the autonomous formation of dynamic folded macromolecules. In October 2020, he joined the University of Freiburg and the livMatS Cluster.
In a video, Pappas shares his thoughts on what drives his research.