Rate My Professor Wayne Hayes

Professor Wayne Hayes is the Professor of Polymer Chemistry and Head of the Soft Matter research group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Reading. He earned his BSc from Nottingham Trent University and PhD from the University of Birmingham. Following a postdoctoral fellowship from 1996 to 1997 with Professor J.M.J. Fréchet at Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked on dendrimers and novel polymeric architectures, Hayes served as Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University from 1997 to 1999. He joined the University of Reading as Lecturer in Organic Chemistry from 1999 to 2006, advancing to his current professorial role thereafter.

Hayes' research focuses on generating novel polymeric materials through state-of-the-art synthetic chemistry and molecular recognition phenomena. His specializations encompass supramolecular polymers assembled via non-covalent interactions, including hydrogen-bonded systems for self-healing coatings and hot-melt adhesives, and π-π stacking blends; photochemically mediated carbene insertion using diazirines for hyperbranched polymers, surface coatings, and gels; dendrimers and hyperbranched architectures for drug delivery, catalysis, and fragrance release; and high-pressure cycloaddition polymerizations yielding polyisoxazolidines. With 135 publications catalogued in the University repository, key contributions include co-editing Healable Polymer Systems: Fundamentals, Synthesis and Applications (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2013) and its 2025 volume, and highly cited papers such as "A Healable Supramolecular Polymer Blend Based on Aromatic π-π Stacking and Hydrogen-Bonding Interactions" (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2010, 897 citations), "Synthesis and Applications of Hyperbranched Polymers" (Eur. Polym. J., 2004, 758 citations), and "Dendrimers: A New Class of Nanoscopic Containers and Delivery Devices" (Eur. Polym. J., 2003, 564 citations). His scholarship reflects an h-index of 42 and over 8,200 citations, supported by EPSRC grants and collaborators including DuPont, Unilever, ICI, and Johnson Matthey. Hayes holds EU Patent EP1792925 (2007) for supramolecular structures and serves on the editorial board of Reactive and Functional Polymers.