Scientist/Engineer Intern

Color is a crucial component of nearly every consumer market and is understandably the first feature that product design teams focus on when differentiating their new product. Color is the primary reason consumers say they’ve purchased a certain product over another. Currently, chemists must painstakingly produce one color at a time, leading to endless recipes for production, the use of dangerous contaminants, and one-off manufacturing processes. New methods to generate color are necessary to overhaul the highly pollutive methods of current manufacturing and expand the global color gamut. Cypris wants to give the industry a much-needed make-over.

Structural color has been viewed by environmentalists as the holy grail to realize a safer alternative to toxic organic dyes, pigments, and effect pigments. Cypris’ team creates polymers (referred to as “binders”) that when formulated into paint or ink and applied to virtually any surface will self-assemble into structured coatings upon drying that reflect specific wavelengths of light based on the size of the polymers. This mechanism for creating color, called “structural color”, is similar to how the Cypris Morpho butterfly achieves the vivid blue color on its wing. Cypris Materials decouples color production from the messy “one-chemistry one-color” status quo, setting color free from limitation.

Cypris is looking for a motivated intern driven by the opportunity to make a significant impact at the ground level of a small energetic team with innovative technology. The successful candidate will be a curious and fast learner that can work efficiently and take the initiative. The phenotype for this candidate is one who gets excited about building a product from the ground up.

·       Help design standard operating procedures for the formulation, application, and finishing of structural color coatings for both internal use and key industry partners/customers

·       Pursuing a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. in chemistry, materials science, engineering, or a related field

·       A semester or more of non-class-based lab experience –or– completion of 2 semesters of organic chemistry

·       Excellent oral and written communication skills

·       Strong organization and project reporting skills

·       Experience in paint, ink, or art application(s) – especially in screen print or spray application strong plus

·       Ability to work independently