Jane E. G. Lipson

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Jane E. G. Lipson is the Albert W. Smith Professor of Chemistry at Dartmouth College. Her research focuses on creating bright lines between the molecular-level structure of polymers (i.e., large synthetic molecules that make up plastics or composites) and their physical behavior. Her work involves using both theory and simulation and, in all cases, is tightly tethered to experimental data on real systems. Research in the Lipson group has targeted polymer mixtures, thin films, and glassy materials, all of which have significant applications in the everyday world.

During her Radcliffe fellowship year, Lipson is studying phase separation in cells and other biological environments. Her initial goal is to learn enough biology so as to map the intense complexity of these systems into a set of problems that are simple enough to be tackled. Her larger aim is to reveal significant new understanding about how and why this self-organizational process occurs within biological media.

Lipson earned all of her degrees, including her PhD, at the University of Toronto, after which she served as a NATO Science Fellow at Dartmouth, later returning to join its faculty. She has been honored by awards both in the United States and abroad and is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). She has served as the elected chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Polymer Physics and the APS Division of Polymer Physics. Since 2008, Lipson has been an associate editor of the American Chemistry Society journal Macromolecules.