Faculty Profile: Helen Tran

Helen Tran

Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry

Helen Tran. Helen Tran is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry, co-appointed to the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry.

Tran designs, at a molecular level, new materials encoded with information for self-assembly, degradability and electronic transport thereby enabling next-generation electronics that autonomously respond to local stimuli and that can be seamlessly integrated with the human body — opening doors for opportunities in environmental monitoring, advanced consumer products and health diagnostics for personalized therapy. She is also designing semiconducting polymers that are concurrently intrinsically stretchable and fully degradable. Tran is also committed to scientific outreach and was selected a AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador for her endeavours.

She received her BSc in chemistry with a minor in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and completed her PhD at Columbia University. She was a post-baccalaureate fellow and Scientific Engineering Assistant at the Molecular Foundry at Berkeley National Labs. She was also an Intelligence Community postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.

Tran has been awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research fellowship, the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellowship, International Center for Materials Research fellowship, George Pegram Award and American Chemical Society PMSE Future Faculty Scholar.

View Professor Tran's departmental profile