R. Kōnane Bay

  • Assistant Professor
  • Sylvia Norviel Cancer Research Faculty Fellow
  • CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING
Kōnane Bat
Address

Office: JSCBB C224

Education

BS, Materials Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2014)
MS, Polymer Science and Engineering, UMass Amherst (2016)
PhD, Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst (2020)

Awards

  • National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2024)
  • U.S. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Outreach Fellow (2024)
  • MIT IMPACT Fellow (2021)
  • Stanford.Berkeley.UCSF Next Generation Faculty Symposium, Honorable Mention (2020)
  • MIT Chemical Engineering Rising Stars Participant (2020)
  • Princeton Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2020 – Present)
  • APS FGSA Travel Award for Excellence in Graduate Research (2020)
  • Frank J. Padden Jr. Award Finalist, American Physical Society (APS)
  • Lighting the Pathway to Faculty Careers for Natives in STEM Fellowship (2019 – Present)
  • Eastman Chemical Student Award in Applied Polymer Science (2019)
  • NSF ACADEME Fellowship (2019)
  • Spaulding-Smith STEM Dissertation Fellowship, UMass Amherst (2019)
  • NEAGAP/IMSD Fellowship, UMass Amherst (2015 – 2016)

Selected Publications

  • A. Martínez-Calvo*, T. Bhattacharjee*, R.K. Bay, H.N. Luu+, A.M. Hancock, N.S. Wingreen, S.S. Datta, “Morphological instability and roughening of growing 3D bacterial colonies”, PNAS, 119, e2208019119 (2022).
  • ​R.K. Bay, T. Zhang, S. Shimomura, M. Ilton, K. Tanaka, R.A. Riggleman, A.J. Crosby, “Decoupling the impact of entanglements and mobility on the failure properties of ultrathin polymer films”, Macromolecules, 55(19), 8505-8514 (2022).
  • C. Chen, C.A. Airoldi, C.A. Lugo, R.K. Bay, B.J. Glover, A.J. Crosby, “Flower Inspiration: Broad-Angle Structural Color Through Tunable Hierarchical Wrinkles in Thin Film Multilayers”, Advanced Functional Materials, 2006256 (2020).
  • R.K. Bay*, K. Zarybnicka*, J. Jančář, A.J. Crosby, “Mechanical Properties of Ultrathin Film Nanocomposites”, ACS Applied Polymer Materials, 2(6), 2220-2227, (2020).
  • W.J. Choi*, R.K. Bay*, A.J. Crosby, “Tensile Properties of Ultrathin Bisphenol-A Polycarbonate Films”, Macromolecules, 52(19), 7489-7494, (2019).
  • R.K. Bay, A.J. Crosby, “Uniaxial Extension of Ultrathin Freestanding Polymer Films”, ACS Macro Letters, 8(9),1080-1085, (2019).
  • R.K. Bay, S. Shimomura, Y. Liu, M. Ilton, A.J. Crosby, “Confinement Effect on Strain Localization in Glassy Polymers”, Macromolecules, 51(10), 3647-3653 (2018).

Research Interests

We are broadly interested in understanding the mechanics of sustainable polymeric materials, with a special emphasis on systems that are traditionally difficult to characterize, such as ultrathin polymer films (< 100 nm), engineered biofilms and engineered living materials. Our laboratory name, Huli Materials Lab, comes from the hua ʻōlelo (Hawaiian word), huli. Huli means to study, to change, and is a part of kalo (taro) that is replanted into the ground to produce new kalo. Kalo is a highly sustainable food source and traditional food staple for Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian people). Our group is inspired by the innate sustainability of the huli kalo cycle to develop sustainable polymeric materials.
 
To achieve our goals, we develop characterization and processing methods tailored for quantifying and programing the properties of both living and synthetic polymeric materials to fabricate sustainable polymeric materials for applications in biotechnology, sensing and protection. Our work is highly collaborative and multidisciplinary, combining expertise from mechanics, engineering, microbiology, materials science and polymer physics.