Christopher M. Bates earned a B.S. degree in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2007 and received a Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin in 2013 under the guidance of C. Grant Willson. After a postdoc with Robert H. Grubbs at the California Institute of Technology, Christopher recently moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara as an Assistant Professor in the Materials and Chemical Engineering Departments. His research focuses on the design of new soft materials. Active projects include the synthesis and characterization of (1) dynamic networks, (2) complex polymer architectures, (3) block polymers, and (4) lithographic patterns.