6/10/2026 Debra Levey Larson
Written by Debra Levey Larson
Polette Centellas, Ph.D. ’22, received a 2026 Early Career Award in Engineering from the Washington Academy of Sciences. The Early Career Award recognizes a promising investigator within five years of graduation who is making notable contributions in any scientific or engineering discipline.
Centellas is a member of the Functional Polymers Group staff at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Her Ph.D. advisors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were Scott White, then Philippe Geubelle and Nancy Sottos.
“Polymers are used in various applications ranging from aerospace to microelectronics,” Centellas said. “At the National Institute of Standards and Technology I study how these materials behave under complex conditions to provide insight into improving their reliability and design.”
During her postdoctoral fellowship at the National Research Council, Centellas studied how polymer films respond to extreme impact events, such as micrometeoroid collisions in space, by launching glass microprojectiles at the film surface at velocities up to about 550 meters per second.
“By using special molecules in the polymer that light up when broken, it became possible to visualize the normally hidden damage beneath the film surface. This highlighted the importance of designing for subsurface damage in addition to the visible surface damage from impact events,” she said.
Currently, as a materials research engineer, Centellas studies polymers used for packaging microelectronics and investigates how they develop mechanical stress in response to complex real-world operating conditions, such as varying temperature and relative humidity. It illustrates how polymer chemistry affects the mechanical integrity of advanced semiconductor packages.