MFS-SPEED: Data-Driven Discovery of Oxygen Barrier Materials for Sustainable Packaging

About This Grant

With this award, Professors Marc Hillmyer of the University of Minnesota, Janani Sampath of the University of Florida, and Zachary Smith and Bradley Olsen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are studying new polymer materials that can be used for the development of food packaging. Single-use food packaging represents one of the largest contributors to plastic waste in our landfills and our environments, and this project will combine innovative chemistry, high-throughput experimentation, and data science to develop innovation pipelines that will yield replacements for current packaging materials that have improved performance and a more sustainable end-of-life. This work will help to secure our food supply while simultaneously protecting our health and environment through the continued development of a robust chemicals industry. A key aspect of the innovation pipeline to be developed is human resources, so the project will focus on broad training for current and future scientists to build capacity in artificial intelligence (AI) and data science. Efforts will focus on introducing data science into general chemistry at the university and community college levels, reaching a broad range of future workers. These will also be transformed into a continuing education course designed to help workers transition to the economy of the future. With this award, Professors Marc Hillmyer of the University of Minnesota, Janani Sampath of the University of Florida, and Zachary Smith and Bradley Olsen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are studying poly(glycolic acid) (PGA)-based barrier materials that can be incorporated into multi-layer flexible packaging materials that are processable, degradable, and have good barrier performance. Currently, PGA is the leading candidate material for barrier packaging due to its high barrier properties and degradability, but it suffers from synthetic challenges and limits to its processability. The goal of this project is to develop a data-driven workflow that combines advances in synthesis with property prediction to discover new PGA materials that can overcome these limitations and yield new sustainable barrier materials. Specific aims of the project include 1) Synthesis of PGA with controlled architectures and the AI-guided design of molecular architectures for chemically similar polymers; 2) Establishing quantitative relationships between molecular structure, polymer processing, and material properties in PGA-based systems; and 3) Leveraging genetic algorithms to design and optimize packaging materials with tunable properties tailored to specific applications. Successful completion of proposal goals will enable the synthesis of sustainable polymers for a wide range of packaging applications while contributing to workforce training through curriculum development for community colleges and industry partners in polymer informatics. This Molecular Foundations for Sustainability: Sustainable Polymers Enabled by Emerging Data Analytics (MFS-SPEED) award is co-funded by the NSF through the Division of Chemistry (CHE), the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS), the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET), the Directorate for Engineering (ENG), and the Division of Innovation and Technology Ecosystems (ITE) in the Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP). Additional MFS-SPEED funding is provided by Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Dow, BASF, and IBM. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.