Jorge Ayarza was born and raised in the great city of Lima, Peru. Being exposed to natural sciences since his early days in high school and driven by an innate curiosity to know more about the world, he decided to pursue a BS in chemistry at Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. He enjoyed his time in undergrad taking lots of interesting classes and doing laboratory work, but also hanging out with friends and family, and eating tasty Peruvian food! For his undergrad thesis, he worked with Professor Javier Nakamatsu in studying biopolymers, namely polysaccharides extracted from seaweed and mollusks. Motivated by the excitement of research in chemistry, he made the big decision of pursuing a PhD in the United States.
BS
Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru; Lima, Peru; 2014
Professor Javier Nakamatsu
Scientific hero
Richard Feynman
Quote
What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a fiction,
and the greatest good is mean,
for all life is a dream,
and dreams themselves are only dreams.
-Segismundo, Life Is a Dream
In the Esser-Kahn group at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Jorge hopes to develop new skills and discover new exciting ways to fabricate and use polymeric materials.
Bio-Inspired Mechanically Adaptive Materials Through Vibration-Induced Crosslinking
Wang, Z., Wang, J., Ayarza, J. et al. Bio-inspired mechanically adaptive materials through vibration-induced crosslinking. Nat. Mater. (2021). doi: 10.1038/s41563-021-00932-5
100th Anniversary of Macromolecular Science Viewpoint: Piezoelectrically Mediated Mechanochemical Reactions for Adaptive Materials
Jorge Ayarza, Zhao Wang, Jun Wang, Chao-Wei Huang, and Aaron P. Esser-Kahn. ACS Macro Lett. 2020, 9, 9, 1237–1248 Aug. 17, 2020. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.0c00477
Mechanically Initiated Bulk-Scale Free-Radical Polymerization
Wang, Z, Ayarza, J, Esser-Kahn, AP, Mechanically Initiated Bulk-Scale Free-Radical Polymerization. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 2019,58, 12023-12026. doi: