On June 29, Dr. Jean-François Lutz, recipient of the Langevin Prize of the French Academy of Sciences and CNRS Research Director (Exceptional Class) at the Institute for Supramolecular Science and Engineering, University of Strasbourg, delivered a Dingxin Lecture titled “The Chemistry of Digital Polymers”. Jilin University President Zhang Xi attended the lecture and presented Dr. Lutz with the Dingxin Lecture Commemorative Plaque. The lecture was chaired by Wu Guanglu, Deputy Director of the State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials.

In his lecture, Dr. Lutz gave a clear overview of synthetic informational polymers, an emerging area of research. He explained that, unlike natural information-bearing polymers such as nucleic acids and proteins, significant progress has been made over the past decade in developing non-biological polymer systems capable of storing information.. These artificial macromolecules represent a growing interdisciplinary field combining polymer chemistry and information technology. Dr. Lutz introduced his team’s methods for synthesizing, sequencing, and decoding informational macromolecules. He also discussed the potential applications of these new materials in information technology and outlined key challenges that remain unresolved in the field. During the discussion session, Dr. Lutz exchanged views with faculty members and students on topics such as the precision of sequence-defined polymer synthesis, the stability of information encoding and retrieval, and the expansion of potential applications. The discussion was lively and engaging.

The lecture was hosted by the Jilin University Association for Science and Technology and organized by the State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials. Faculty and student representatives from the College of Chemistry and the State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials attended the lecture.