Professor Abby Knight grew up in Charlottesville, VA and received her B.S. in Chemistry with minors in Mathematics and Biology at University of North Carolina (UNC). She then received her Ph.D. in Chemical Biology at the University of California, Berkeley in the lab of Prof. Matt Francis working on the development of a platform applying combinatorial libraries for metal ligands to address problems in water and environmental remediation. Follow her graduate studies, she completed a postdoc with Prof. Craig Hawker at the University of California, Santa Barbara designing smart nanomaterials with unique architectures.

Abby returned to UNC as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Her group broadly work in designing macromolecular materials with functions inspired by biological systems. Some areas of research include creating biomimetic copolymers and peptide-polymer amphiphiles. Abby has recently received numerous awards such as 2023 Early Career Investigator Award from ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, 2024 PMSE Early Investigator Award from ACS Polymeric Materials, and 2024 Sloan Research Fellow.

For more information about Abby and her group: https://www.knightgroupunc.org/X: https://twitter.com/KnightGroupUNC and https://twitter.com/abigailsknight