Assistant Professor Jessica Lamb named McKnight Land-Grant Professor

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (4/2/2025) – Assistant Professor Jessica Lamb has been awarded the 2025-27 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship. The award aims to support highly-promising junior faculty members who have the potential to make significant contributions to their departments and to their fields of study.

Lamb’s research explores the intersection of organic chemistry, catalysis, and polymer chemistry, applying innovative approaches to polymer synthesis. Her group’s research includes developing masked N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) for switchable organocatalysis, enabling latent catalysis and improved catalyst recycling. The Switchable Subgroup of the Lamb Lab is also using thiocarbonyl thio compounds (TCTs) as universal mediators to combine cationic and anionic polymerization mechanisms in sequence to synthesize novel block copolymers. This previously unreported system of polymerization aims to expand the possibilities for advanced materials design.

Another area of research in the Lamb group aims to address critical plastic waste challenges in the polymer research community. Lamb and her group focus on a subclass of polyurethanes known as polyoxazolidinones (POxa), which have excellent thermal stability and interesting properties arising from the five-membered heterocycles embedded in the polymer backbone. The group has pioneered the improved synthesis, characterization, and sustainability of POxa, including the depolymerization of POxa back to their monomers, which can be purified and repolymerized to comparable materials to establish a circular lifecycle for these polymers.

When she’s not in the lab, Lamb is often busy paying it forward in the broader chemistry community. Here at UMN, she serves as the faculty advisor for the ACS POLY/PMSE Student Chapter and is a faculty presenter at the annual Energy & U outreach show. On the regional level, she serves as the Vice Chair of the Midwest Chapter of Empowering Women in Organic Chemistry, an affinity group that aims to empower and support women to enter and lead successful careers in the field of Organic Chemistry.

Lamb joined the Department of Chemistry faculty in 2020. Over the past five years, she has built a dynamic research group made up of eleven graduate students and one undergraduate. Lamb has been previously recognized for her work with the AAAS Marion Milligan Mason Award (2025), the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award (2022), and the American Chemical Society Division of Professional Relations Leadership Development Award (2021). She was also selected as one of the American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry Academic Young Investigators in 2024.

Chemistry Department Head Christy Haynes writes: “Not only is Prof. Lamb doing exciting interdisciplinary polymer science, she is also a thoughtful mentor to her research group, an engaging and collaborative classroom teacher, and a hard-working, optimistic leader among our faculty. We are lucky to count her as a member of our Chemistry community, and I'm thrilled that her excellence is being recognized with the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship.”

The McKnight Land-Grant Professorship awards recipients with $50,000 and an honorary professorship title to be held for two years. The Department of Chemistry has a strong history of being home to McKnight Land-Grant Professors; Lamb is the seventh to earn this title in the last 10 years.