Our group has taken advantage of the ease of functionalizing norbornene monomers to make a range of polynorbornenes with designed activities. In our bio-project, one set of water-soluble polymers has been shown to interact with bacterial membranes in several distinct ways including disruption and penetration. We have measured the interactions of three of them with E. coli lipid extract vesicles using a Biacore SPR biosensor. These preliminary binding studies results will be presented. Our materials project involves a set of polymers with promising fire-retardant properties. We have observed how they perform on their own and also as additives in treated paper and polyurethane films. Most recently we have attempted to use our polymers to surface modify magnesium hydroxide which itself is a flame-resistant additive, but only at high loadings. Both of these projects have demonstrated that tuning the properties, of membrane-active agents and fire-retardant additives, can be achieved through facile modifications of the polymer along the
backbone and side chains.