R. K艒nane听Bay
- Assistant Professor
- Sylvia Norviel Cancer Research Faculty Fellow
- CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING
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
- ACS Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator Award听(2025)
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Research Program Award (AFOSR YIP) (2025)
- National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2025)
- U.S. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Outreach Fellow (2024)
- 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 鈥 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 (2019-2021)
- 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 鈥 2016)
Selected Publications
- A. Mart铆nez-Calvo*, T. Bhattacharjee*,听R.K. Bay,听H.N. Luu+, A.M. Hancock, N.S. Wingreen, S.S. Datta, 鈥淢orphological instability and roughening of growing 3D bacterial colonies鈥, PNAS, 119, e2208019119 (2022).
- 鈥婻.K. Bay, T. Zhang, S. Shimomura, M. Ilton, K. Tanaka, R.A. Riggleman, A.J. Crosby, 鈥淒ecoupling the impact of entanglements and mobility on the failure properties of ultrathin polymer films鈥, Macromolecules, 55(19), 8505-8514 (2022).
- C. Chen, C.A. Airoldi, C.A. Lugo, R.K. Bay, B.J. Glover, A.J. Crosby, 鈥淔lower Inspiration: Broad-Angle Structural Color Through Tunable Hierarchical Wrinkles in Thin Film Multilayers鈥, Advanced Functional Materials, 2006256 (2020).
- R.K. Bay*, K. Zarybnicka*, J. Jan膷谩艡, A.J. Crosby, 鈥淢echanical Properties of Ultrathin Film Nanocomposites鈥, ACS Applied Polymer Materials, 2(6), 2220-2227, (2020).
- W.J. Choi*, R.K. Bay*, A.J. Crosby, 鈥淭ensile Properties of Ultrathin Bisphenol-A Polycarbonate Films鈥, Macromolecules, 52(19), 7489-7494, (2019).
- R.K. Bay, A.J. Crosby, 鈥淯niaxial Extension of Ultrathin Freestanding Polymer Films鈥, ACS Macro Letters, 8(9),1080-1085, (2019).
- R.K. Bay, S. Shimomura, Y. Liu, M. Ilton, A.J. Crosby, 鈥淐onfinement Effect on Strain Localization in Glassy Polymers鈥, Macromolecules, 51(10), 3647-3653 (2018).
Research Interests
The Huli Materials Lab is broadly interested in听fabricating and characterizing traditionally difficult to handle materials, such as ultrathin polymer films (< 100 nm), biofilms, and engineered living materials. Our laboratory name, Huli Materials Lab, comes from the hua 驶艒lelo听(Hawaiian word), huli. Huli听means to study, to change, and is a part of kalo听(taro) that is replanted into the ground to produce new kalo. Kalo听is a highly sustainable food source and traditional food staple for K膩naka Maoli听(Native Hawaiian people). Our group is inspired by the innate sustainability of the huli kalo听cycle to develop new methods to fabricate and characterize sustainable polymeric materials for applications in biotechnology, sensing, and protection.
听
Our work is highly collaborative and multidisciplinary, combining expertise from mechanics, engineering, microbiology, materials science, and polymer physics.