 civilization is shaped by the materials we develop and use, starting with the use of stone tools in prehistorical time, to the use of clays and metals to create objects of more complex shapes, to the invention of alloys and plastics which have become ubiquitous in our modern society. So the stone tools help our ancestors to collect and hunt for food. As we grew more sophisticated, new materials were continuously created to meet the changing needs of the society. As our world continued to evolve, we are now faced with increasingly more complex challenges. These challenges range from our currently unsustainable consumption of raw resources to the fast rising and spreading of infectious diseases. To tackle the many problems we face in the modern age, traditional materials are just simply not good enough. What we need is a new generation of multifunctional hybrid materials. One solution is to invent new chemistry to make brand new materials. But this approach requires a lot of investment both in time and money. A second approach is to take existing material of desirable property to create blends. But blending is a rather difficult technology, especially if you're dealing with high molecular weight polymer. Our last strategy to create hybrid material through a block of polymer platform. While we cannot easily blend to polymer to create a uniform mixture, we can chemically link them into what's known as a block of polymer. The chemical bond keeps the polymer close enough to behave as a homogeneous single material. Additionally, block of polymer has the unique ability to self-organize into very uniform nanostructures. This then allows us to have another level of control over material property. In this case, we can control not only the components of a material, but also the spatial arrangement of the components. At my lab at Keist, we're particularly interested in bringing together bio-macromolecules such as DNA, RNA, protein, and various types of carbohydrate polymer with synthetic petrochemical-based polymer to create new material that are both functional and mechanically durable. One of such examples is polysaccharide block of polymer. Polysaccharide might sound unfamiliar to some of you, but they're just carbohydrate in the polymer form, and they're widely abundant on this planet. However, by themselves, they're not very easy to process, and also they're not very strong. However, when you combine a polysaccharide with a synthetic component into a block of polymer structure, the resulting polysaccharide block of polymer can spontaneously form nanostructure with very regular periodicity. These new material have the special feature where the polysaccharide segment maintains its unique functionality, while the synthetic components bring additional benefits of mechanical durability and processability. Ultimately, our goal is to introduce polysaccharide as a newer material option so that we can enjoy plastic in a more sustainable and safer fashion. Another type of material we are working on are DNA and RNA-based focal polymers. One of the most interesting features of DNA and RNA is their ability to hybridize with a complementary strand. This process is highly specific, which makes them perfect candidates for detecting biological targets. By combining DNA with a synthetic polymer into a block of polymer structure, we can bring another level of sophistication to the design. The resulting material will benefit both from the specificity of DNA, also the spatial control of block of polymer, which we believe will lead to unprecedented detection efficiency. After adding additional technology such as microfluidics, we can design compact and highly efficient virus detection devices to be used at places such as hospitals and airports for the timely detection and prevention of infectious diseases. So the material scientists and engineers before us have done phenomenal work at understanding the property of each class of material separately, which put our generation at a position to take the next step forward by integrating different material classes together in an intelligent fashion to create the next generation of hybrid material that can offer sustainable and efficient solutions to solve the many problems we face in the modern age. So one of the questions I want to pose to you today is how can we bring the materials we develop at KAIS to the market such that they're not just created to satisfy our academic curiosity, but also to bring real benefits to the society. So thank you for listening to my talk.