Meet Voss Fellow Lucie Johnson ’27: Building a more sustainable plastics landscape

Johnson’s research could guide the development of sustainable plastics—and a more sustainable future.

The Voss Fellowship Program is the premier training and funding opportunity for undergraduates interested in environmental research at Brown University.

For Lucie Johnson ’27, climate solutions start at the molecular level. As a member of Associate Professor Jerome Robinson’s lab, she is exploring how chemistry can help address one of the world’s most persistent environmental challenges: plastic pollution.

How would you summarize your research?

My work focuses on the development and characterization of a library of novel biodegradable polymers (plastics). More specifically, I study triblock copolymers composed of the three most common bioplastics. All three are biocompatible, degrade via industrial composting, and are sourced from abundant and inexpensive precursors, but they have limited properties in isolation. Copolymerization allows us to combine the properties of these bioplastics to achieve synergetic properties.

These findings will form the foundation of robust structure-function relationships that will guide the development of sustainable plastics, which can begin to replace difficult-to-degrade polyolefins in their wide range of applications.

Why were you drawn to this research?

I’ve always been interested in using chemistry for sustainable applications; chemistry has incredible potential to develop creative, global solutions to the many challenges we now face due to climate change. Polymers in particular are, to me, chemistry made tangible. We can take molecular building blocks and use fundamental chemistry concepts to actually build materials that we can hold, which is just incredible to me.

Why is this research important?

In the big picture, our goal is to develop materials that can contribute to a more sustainable, less-polluting plastic economy. Polyolefins, which make up the majority of plastics produced worldwide, are incredibly difficult to degrade and result in huge amounts of plastic pollutants ending up in the environment every year. (Polyolefins are truly everywhere: cling film, plastic bags, plastic bottles, food and medical packaging, pipes, and much more.)

And while polyolefins are typically produced from fossil fuels, bioplastics come from renewable sources. If biodegradable plastics were able to replace polyolefins in their wide range of uses, we could remove a significant source of environmental pollution.

This work builds a very important foundation of knowledge that we will be able to use to develop more optimized systems that will hopefully one day play a role in a more sustainable plastics landscape.

Lucie Johnson in the lab — Johnson holds her polymer samples in the lab.

Johnson working in the lab — Johnson works on ligand synthesis in a glovebox, an air- and water-free environment.

Polymer sample — One of Johnson's polymer samples.

What does a typical day of research look like?

It really varies! Depending on what phase I’m in, I get to do both chemistry and engineering. Some days, I do a lot of chemical synthesis. Other days, when I’m focused more on macroscopic materials testing, I head over to the School of Engineering, where I test the polymers’ adhesive properties. This is a very collaborative work, so I’ve had the opportunity to do work with labs in the Engineering Research Center, BioMed, and even the University of Rhode Island!

How has the Voss Fellowship furthered your research?

This fellowship has given me the opportunity to really dedicate my time to this project. The time that I’m now able to invest in my work has been extremely valuable and allowed me to make significant progress.

I’ve also really appreciated the opportunity to be part of a cohort of researchers. It’s been interesting to see the kinds of research other Voss Fellows are doing and think about how my work fits in with theirs.

“ Climate solutions are inherently interdisciplinary. Being a Voss Fellow has served as an incredible reminder of how important it is to embrace that fact and be an active participant in cross-discipline discussions and collaboration. ”

Where do you see this work taking you in the future?

In the short term, I believe this work will culminate in publishable results that I hope to present at the American Chemical Society Spring 2027 National Meeting. In the long term, this project has sparked my interest in materials design and inspired me to seek out answers about how we can use chemistry to build complex materials that address major environmental challenges. To this end, I plan to go to graduate school to pursue a PhD in chemistry with a focus on molecular-level materials design.

Ultimately, I hope that over the course of my research career, my work now and in the future will serve as a stepping stone in the process of building a more sustainable plastics landscape.

Institute at Brown for Environment and Society