| Helen Tran | |
| Workplaces: | University of Toronto Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory |
| Alma Mater: | Columbia University University of California, Berkeley |
| Thesis Title: | Block copolymer templates for functional nanostructured materials : Periodic patterning and hierarchical ordering |
| Thesis Url: | http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1004795914 |
| Thesis Year: | 2016 |
Helen Tran is a professor of chemistry at the University of Toronto. She was named by Chemical & Engineering News as one of their "Talented 12" in 2022. A statue of Tran was exhibited for the IfThenSheCan exhibit in the NorthPark Center in Dallas in 2021 and in Washington, D.C., in March 2022.[1]
Tran grew up in the United States. She was interested in art when she was at middle school, but shifted her focus to chemistry during her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley.[2] Tran then worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with polymer chemist Ron Zuckerman. Tran was a graduate student at Columbia University, where she worked alongside Luis Campos on hierarchical ordering in block co-polymer systems. After earning her doctorate, she moved to Stanford University, where she worked under the supervision of Zhenan Bao.[3] She was selected as an American Association for the Advancement of Science IF/THEN ambassador in 2019.[4]
Tran's research considers next-generation materials that are stimuli-responsive for novel technologies. She started her independent scientific career at the University of Toronto in 2021. She has studied peptide-like polymers, 'peptoids', which undergo self-assembly to form useful nanomaterials.