Eugenia Kumacheva

Eugenia Kumacheva OC FRS FRSC[2] is a University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto. Her research interests span across the fields of fundamental and applied polymers science, nanotechnology, microfluidics, and interface chemistry. She was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2008 "for the design and development of new materials with many applications including targeted drug delivery for cancer treatments and materials for high density optical data storage".[3][4][5][2][6] In 2011, she published a book on the Microfluidic Reactors for Polymer Particles[7] co-authored with Piotr Garstecki. She is Canadian Research Chair in Advanced Polymer Materials (Tier 1). She is Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC).

Eugenia Kumacheva FRS FRSC
Eugenia Kumacheva at the Royal Society admissions day in London in 2016
Born	Odessa, Soviet Union
Nationality	Canadian
Alma mater	Saint Petersburg State University of Chemical Technology (BSc, MSc) Russian Academy of Science (PhD)
Scientific career
Fields	Chemistry Materials science Polymers Microfluidics Nanoscience[1]
Institutions	University of Toronto Weizmann Institute of Science Moscow State University
Website	www.chem.utoronto.ca/staff/EK

Education and early life

Eugenia Kumacheva was born in Odessa, Soviet Union. After earning her undergraduate degree (cum laude) from the Technical University in St. Petersburg,[8] she worked in industry for several years before beginning her Ph.D. research. In 1986, she obtained her Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry of polymers in the Institute of Physical Chemistry Russian Academy of Sciences.[8]

Career and research

Eugenia then worked as a staff scientist at the Moscow State University [9] before beginning her postdoctoral fellowship supported by Minerva Foundation with Professor Jacob Klein at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.[9] She then joined the research lab of Professor Mitch Winnik at the University of Toronto in Canada to study multicomponent polymer systems. In 1996, Kumacheva became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto, and in 2005, she was promoted to the ranks of Full Professor.[9] Eugenia has published 2 books, 10 book chapters, and 270 papers with >60 citations/paper. She holds 40 patents and is a founder of a company FlowJEM. She has given >300 invited, keynote and plenary lectures, as well as public lectures. In 2008, she was the first Canadian recipient of the L'Oréal-UNESCO "Women in Science" Prize.[10] In 2016, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[2] In 2017, she was awarded a CIC medal "presented as a mark of distinction and recognition to a person who has made an outstanding contribution to the science of chemistry or chemical engineering in Canada, this is the CIC’s top award." In 2020, Eugenia was appointed by The Governor General of Canada as an Officer to the Order of Canada for “her contributions to chemistry, notably through microfluidics and polymer research, and for her efforts as an advocate for women in science".

Eugenia Kumacheva's work focuses on polymer science, nanoscience, microfluidics, and interface chemistry. She has a strong effort in biomimetic research focused biological tissues, fluids, and environments with polymers and nanomaterials. Kumacheva has been involved with important developments in modeling the biological conditions of myocardial infarctions, strokes, pulmonary embolism, and various other blood related disorders or health conditions using polymers and nano-materials. Some of this work is related to mimicking blood vessels in order to gain a greater understanding of the chemistry and physics involved in blood clots. Kumacheva has been involved in research exploring the potential of microbubbles, a gas enclosed by a natural or synthetic polymer for both diagnostic and therapeutic applications such as targeted drug delivery and molecular imaging. An additional medical application of Kumacheva's work is the creation of hydrogels [11] and various other chemical environments to either support the life of a stem cell, affect necrotic heart tissue as well as deter the metastasis of cancer cells. Kumacheva has made strong contributions in the area of self-assembly of nanoparticles and microparticles. Her research interests include nature-derived nanopartocles, e.g., cellulose nanocrystals and nanofibers [12]).

Honors and awards

Eugenia Kumacheva's awards and honors include:

• 1992: Minerva Foundation Fellowship (Germany)
• 1994: Imperial College London Visiting Fellowship (UK)
• 1999: Premier Research Excellence Award (Canada)
• 2000: International Chorafas Foundation Award
• 2002: Recipient of Canada Research Chair in Advanced Polymer Materials/Tier 2
• 2003: Schlumberger Scholarship University of Oxford
• 2004: Clara Benson Award (CIC Award)
• 2005: Macromolecular Science and Engineer Award, Chemical Institute of Canada
• 2006: Recipient of Canada Research Chair in Advanced Polymer Materials/ Tier 1
• 2007: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC)
• 2017: E. Gordon Young Lectureship, The Chemical Institute of Canada
• 2008: L'Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science Prize (Laureate for North America[10])
• 2009: Japan-Canada WISET lectureship, Royal Society of Canada
• 2010: Killam Research Fellowship, Canada Council for the Arts
• 2011: Distinguished Lecturer, The University of Western Ontario, Canada.
• 2011: Connaught Innovation Award, Connaught Foundation.
• 2012: Humboldt Research Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany).
• 2012: Inventor of the Year, University of Toronto
• 2013: University professor (distinction given to <2% of faculty at the University of Toronto
• 2016: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)[2] the British National Academy of Science
• 2017: Schmidt Lectureship, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
• 2017: Chemical Institute of Canada Medal
• 2019: 3M Lectureship
• 2019: De Gennes Prize Royal Society of Chemistry
• 2020: Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Ontario

References

1. Eugenia Kumacheva publications indexed by Google Scholar
2. Anon (2014). "Eugenia Kumacheva". royalsociety.org. London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 2018-09-09. Retrieved 2017-06-05. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:

   "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-11-11)

3. "2009 Edition Of The L'Oréal-Unesco For Women In Science Awards". L'Oréal Paris. 10 November 2008. Archived from the original on 16 November 2015. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
4. "What Toronto's top minds are reading this summer". Megan Ogilvie. Toronto Star. 8 August 2010. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
5. "New insights into 'switchable water' have implications for water purification and desalination". Lisa Zyga. phys.org. 10 August 2014. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
6. Wong, Patrick. "Research". www.chem.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 2017-06-05.
7. Kumacheva, Eugenia; Garstecki, Piotr (2011). Microfluidic Reactors for Polymer Particles - Kumacheva - Wiley Online Library. doi:10.1002/9780470979228. ISBN 9780470979228.
8. "Professor Eugenia Kumacheva". University of Toronto.
9. "Staff: Eugenia Kumacheva". University of Toronto.
10. "2009 Edition Of The L'Oréal-Unesco For Women In Science Awards - L'Oréal Group". loreal.com. Retrieved 2017-05-12.
11. Wang, Yihe; Li, Yunfeng; Thérien-Aubin, Héloïse; Ma, Jennifer; Zandstra, Peter W.; Kumacheva, Eugenia (2016-01-01). "Two-dimensional arrays of cell-laden polymer hydrogel modules". Biomicrofluidics. 10 (1): 014110. doi:10.1063/1.4940430. PMC 4723409. PMID 26858822.
12. Querejeta-Fernández, Ana; Kopera, Bernd; Prado, Karen S.; Klinkova, Anna; Methot, Myriam; Chauve, Grégory; Bouchard, Jean; Helmy, Amr S.; Kumacheva, Eugenia (2015-10-27). "Circular Dichroism of Chiral Nematic Films of Cellulose Nanocrystals Loaded with Plasmonic Nanoparticles". ACS Nano. 9 (10): 10377–10385. doi:10.1021/acsnano.5b04552. ISSN 1936-0851. PMID 26336902.

 This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.