People Type: Scholar

Dmitri Talapin is the Louis Block Professor in the Department of Chemistry, James Franck Institute, and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago.

He was born in the USSR and grew up in Belarus, received a doctorate degree from the University of Hamburg, Germany in 2002, followed by postdoctoral work at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. From 2005 to 2007, he was a staff scientist at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and finally joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 2007.

His research interests focus on inorganic nanomaterials, from synthetic methodology to self-organization to charge transport and device applications. His accolades include ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award, Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator Award, Top 100 chemists of the decade based on citation impact by Thompson Reuters, and the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering. He was elected a Materials Research Society Fellow in 2024, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2014, and serves as an Associate Editor for Chemical Science published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Sihong Wang’s research focuses on the development of biomimetic polymer electronics and bio-energy harvesting for interfacing with the human body and other biological systems as wearable and implantable devices. The overarching goal of the research is to develop functional polymers and devices that combine advanced electronic/photonic properties with biomimetic mechanical, chemical properties, and operation principles, for realizing the continuous, efficient, and long-term stable acquisition and processing of health data. Currently, the research in the Wang group has mainly four directions:

1. Human-interfaced biosensors (chemical, mechanical, electrical);
2. Immune-compatible electronic polymers and devices;
3. Stretchable optoelectronics;
4. Neuromorphic computing for artificial intelligence.

Wang has published 70 peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals including Nature, Science, Nature Materials, Nature Electronics, Matter, Nature Communications, Science Advances,Advanced Materials, etc., with >20,600 citations to his work and a Google Scholar H-index of 59. Wang is also a named inventor on 8 US patents.

Stuart Rowan is the Barry L. MacLean Professor of Molecular Engineering and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago.

Prof. Rowan was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and grew up in Troon, Ayrshire, on Scotland’s west coast. He received his BSc (Hons.) in Chemistry in 1991 from the University of Glasgow and stayed there for graduate school in the laboratory of Dr. David D. MacNicol, receiving his PhD in 1995. In 1994 he moved to the chemistry department at the University of Cambridge to work with Prof. Jeremy K. M. Sanders FRS. He moved across the Atlantic, and the continental U.S., to continue his postdoctoral studies with Prof. Sir J. Fraser Stoddart FRS at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1998. In 1999 he was appointed as an Assistant Professor to the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2005, and became a Full Professor in 2008. In 2016, he joined the Institute for Molecular Engineering (now the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering) and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. He also has a staff appointment in the Chemical and Engineering Science (CSE) Division at Argonne National Laboratory.

He is a National Science Foundation CAREER awardee, received the Morley Medal (Cleveland ACS) in 2013, the CWRU Distinguished University Award in 2015, and the Herman Mark Scholar Award (ACS) in 2015. He is an ACS Fellow, an ACS POLY Fellow, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of ACS Macro Letters (https://pubs.acs.org/journal/amlccd), and is on the editorial advisory board for a number of journals.

He has published over 170 scientific papers and reviews. His research interests focus on the use of dynamic chemistry (covalent and non-covalent) in the construction and properties of structurally dynamic and adaptive polymeric materials. The current interests of his group span responsive polymers, sustainable materials, polymers for energy, biomaterials, and new polymer synthesis. Specifically, his group works on supramolecular polymers, dynamic covalent polymers, self-healing materials, responsive adhesives, metal-containing polymers, gels, biomaterials, cellulose nanocrystal/nanocellulose, and interlocked polymeric architectures.

Shrayesh Patel completed his undergraduate degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2007, then received his PhD in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2013.

Before joining PME as an assistant professor, he was a postdoctoral research associate in the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, one of the world’s most prestigious institutions for the study of advanced materials science research.

Patel’s honors include his selection as a 2023 PMSE Early State Investigator and one of ACS Polymers Au’s 2022 Rising Stars in Polymers.

Chong Liu received her PhD in materials science and engineering at Stanford University in 2015 and her BS in chemistry from Fudan University.

From 2015 to 2018, Prof. Liu was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. She joined the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering in 2018 as a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor.

Liu has received a 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Early Career Research Program award. She was named a 2023 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar.

Prof. Esser-Kahn grew up in suburban Detroit. He studied at the California Institute of Technology and The University of California at Berkeley. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He launched his career at the University of Irvine in the Chemistry Department where he worked from 2011 until 2017. Joining the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) in the same year, he has pursued many areas of research.

His primary area of research focuses on immunoengineering and improving immune responses in vaccination. Here, his group works on improving innate immune responses through better understanding immune responses and finding new ways to manipulate and improve responses. His secondary area of research focuses on adaptive materials. Here, his group works on developing materials that mimic the human body in their ability to respond and adapt to an external environment – providing force-mediated adaptation.

Po-Chun Hsu is an Assistant Professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. Prof. Hsu received his BS from National Tsing Hua University. He earned his PhD degree in Materials Science and Engineering and was a postdoctoral researcher in Mechanical Engineering, both at Stanford University.

Prior to joining PME at the University of Chicago, he was an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University from 2019 to 2022.

He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2022), Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards (2021), MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 China (2020), and Sony Faculty Innovation Award (2019). His PhD thesis project in cooling textile was selected as Top Ten World-Changing Ideas by Scientific American. He is currently serving on the early-career advisory board for Nano Letter (Chair) and EcoMat.

Laura Gagliardi is the Richard and Kathy Leventhal Professor in the Department of Chemistry, with joint appointments in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the James Franck Institute. She also directs the Chicago Center for Theoretical Chemistry.

Prof. Gagliardi became an assistant professor at the University of Palermo in 2002. In 2005, she became associate professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. She joined the University of Minnesota as a professor of chemistry in 2009, was appointed as Distinguished McKnight University Professor in 2014, and was awarded a McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in 2018. She served as the director of the DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center called Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center from 2014 to 2022. Since 2022 she has been serving as director of the DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center called Catalyst Design for Decarbonization Center.

Gagliardi has received the Pauling Medal Award, the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, the Award in Theoretical Chemistry from the Physical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society, the Humboldt Research Award, and the Bourke Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Faraday Lectureship Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry, among others.

She is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. She is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Academia Europaea, the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, and the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, which is the leading theoretical chemistry journal in the world.

Junhong Chen is currently a Crown Family Professor of Molecular Engineering at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and lead water strategist at Argonne National Laboratory.

Prior to coming to Chicago, Prof. Chen served as a program director for the Engineering Research Centers (ERC) program of the US National Science Foundation (NSF).  He also served as a co-chair of the NSF-wide ERC Working Group to design the ERC Planning Grants program and the Gen-4 ERC program.  In addition, Chen was a representative from the Engineering Directorate serving on the NSF-wide Working Groups for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) and NSF Research Traineeship (NRT).

Prior to joining NSF in May 2017, he was a regent scholar of the University of Wisconsin System, a Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and an Excellence in Engineering Faculty Fellow in Nanotechnology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). He served as the director of NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) on Water Equipment & Policy (WEP) for six years.  He founded NanoAffix Science LLC to commercialize real-time water sensors based on 2D nanomaterials.

Chen received his PhD in mechanical engineering from University of Minnesota in 2002 and was a postdoctoral scholar in chemical engineering at California Institute of Technology from 2002 to 2003.  Chen is an elected fellow of National Academy of Inventors and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He is a recipient of the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) Medal.  His start-up company, NanoAffix, is a recipient of the 2016 Wisconsin Innovation Award.