Chinedum Osuji


Chinedum Osuji is a former Taekwondo Olympian and an Eduardo D. Glandt Presidential Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at University of Pennsylvania.

Early life and education

Chinedum Osuji was born in Trinidad and Tobago and lived there until he began his education in the United States. He studied Materials Science and Engineering, receiving his Bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1999, and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003.
After receiving his PhD, he worked at Surface Logix Inc., a start-up company, and then from 2005-2007 was a post-doc at Harvard University. In 2007, he joined the faculty of Yale University. In 2018, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania.

Taekwondo career

In 2000, while at MIT, Chinedum Osuji co-founded the MIT sport taekwondo team.
He represented Trinidad and Tobago at the World Taekwondo Championships in the 2001, 2003, and 2005 games.
In 2003, he received a silver medal at the Pan American Games qualifier.
In 2004, Chinedum qualified to compete in taekwondo men's 80 kg at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, but was defeated by Rashad Ahmadov of Azerbaijan in the preliminary round.
He competed in the 2007 Pan American Games, receiving a bronze medal and then announced his retirement from future international competitions.

Scientific work

In 2007, after completing his post-doc at Harvard University, he joined the faculty of Yale University in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. In 2017 he joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania as the Eduardo D. Glandt Presidential Professor.
His work focuses on the study of the structure, dynamics, and self-assembly of soft matter for use in applications such as organic solar cells, nanofiltration and microfluidic bio-assays. In particular, he has studied methods to induce long-range order in soft matter systems such as block copolymers and liquid crystals and self-assembly of nanomaterials.
He is the author of over 100 publications. He was awarded several named lectureships, and he is the recipient of several awards, including the NSF CAREER award award in 2009, the 3M Nontenured faculty award in 2012, the office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2012 and the American Physical Society John M. Dillon medal in 2016.