University of Tennessee
Materials Science & Engineering Department


Cotton Pekol Defends His Doctoral Dissertation
Knoxville, TN, March 31, 2025





Cotton's PhD research focuses on developing and evaluating processing conditions, recycling methods and structure-property relationshpis for shape memory materials based on liquid crystalline epoxy networks.


He was advised by Prof. David Harper in the Center for Renewable Carbon at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture.


Cotton's doctoral committee included (left to right) Prof. David Keffer in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Prof. Harper, Prof. Alexei Sokolov in the Department of Chemistry and Prof. Dustin Gilmer in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering.

Some of Cotton's dissertation research has already been published:
  • Pekol, C., Furst, J., Li, Y., Keum, J. & Harper, D.P., “3D Printing of Thermally Responsive Shape Memory Liquid Crystalline Epoxy Networks”, ACS Omega 9 (39), 2024, pp. 40801-40809, doi: 10.1021/acsomega.4c05664.


There is other photographic documentation of Cotton's time at the University of Tennessee. Some of these date back to his undergraduate days.

More photos on the Keffer research group site.