How doctoral student Matthew Tamasi found himself studying with a childhood neighbor
As a boy, Matthew Tamasi ENG ’18 loved spending time in the summers at his grandparents’ Brick, New Jersey beach house – and playing with some kids next door. These kids just happened to be the younger sisters of Adam Gormley, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Tamasi’s doctoral advisor.
“My father likes to host people and set up the house for people to have a good time,” recalls Gormley. “So many people came over so frequently, we called the house ‘Camp Gormley’. We even had a flag that said that.”
Gormley continues, “I remember Matt as a happy-go-lucky, very polite kid who loved to come over and play tetherball with my sisters. I see that in his demeanor today – he’s just older and more mature.”
While Tamasi knew the teen-aged Gormley, he mostly spent time with Gormley’s younger sisters who were closer to his age. “I’m sort of a naturalist, and distinctly remember that his sister Ellen taught me that you can put crabs to sleep – or make them pass out – if you turn them upside-down,” he says. “His dad would take me out boating or tubing with them, which was always really fun.”
The two reconnected purely by coincidence. Tamasi was an undergraduate when Gormley joined the biomedical engineering faculty in 2017. “I had no clue that he was even an engineer until my grandparents told me that he was getting a job at Rutgers. When I found out he was joining the biomedical engineering department, I shot him an email and we met for lunch. It was the first time I’d talked to him in years,” Tamasi says.
At the time, Gormley was setting up his lab. “Matt was looking for a research opportunity and I was looking for people – so it was a match. I had no idea he’d become such an integral part of the lab,” says Gormley.
Tamasi was, in fact, the lead author on a recently published study in the journal Advanced Intelligent Systems that details how Gormley’s Rutgers-led team is using a robot and custom software to make synthetic polymers. This innovative automated approach will simplify and expedite the creation of advanced materials by industry and medicine.
“It’s impossible to find anything that doesn’t have polymers – which are a component of plastics – in them, which is why they are a major industry driver,” explains Gormley. This technology provides an automated way to synthesize polymers that are key components of advanced materials used in new technologies for everything from cancer therapeutics to electronics with minimal human input.
An experienced researcher could perhaps create several polymers in a day. With custom software that was created by Tamasi, and a liquid-handling purchased robot, the new system can create as many as 384 different polymers at once in the open air – making it possible for non-experts to create polymers.
Gormley notes that Tamasi, who created the project’s custom software, “embraced the research with open arms and an unexpected level of passion and enthusiasm. He has done such an exceptional job at taking this idea from dream to full reality.”
For Tamasi, working with Gormley as both an undergraduate and a doctoral student is a pleasure. “He’s been a great scientific mentor who gives me the freedom to explore things. He promotes curiosity – which is critical in our field.”
Gormley, too, appreciates their unique relationship. “It’s fun for me,” he says. “I enjoy watching his progression. I have a perspective with Matt that I don’t have with other students – and it’s really enjoyable for me.”
Theirs is also more than an advisor/student relationship. It is also professional. According to Gormley, as co-founders of a planned startup company for their new technology, the two are working with Rutgers to pursue steps for research commercialization.
Tamasi’s grandparents and Gormley’s father and stepmother are still neighbors and good friends. “One of the nicest things is that if Matt has an accomplishment, my dad forwards the news to his grandparents – it’s a secondary way for his family to learn about his accomplishments,” Gormley notes. “It’s something I enjoy doing and a fun way to brag about him.”
And theirs isn’t the only coincidental School of Engineering connection: Dean Thomas Farris told Gormley that he realized he knew the Tamasis, whose plumbing company had done work on his house, when he saw the research study story.