Category Archives: Group members

Xun’s Nature Catalysis work gets highlighted

The work of Xun Guan, recently published at Nature Catalysis, is highlighted in the News & Views session of Nature Catalysis. Congrats to Xun! And we are grateful for the support and appreciation from the community!

Below is the figure from the News & Views of Nature Catalysis.

Fig. 1
A microbe–semiconductor hybrid was constructed by interfacing CO2/N2-fixing bacterium X. autotrophicus with cadmium telluride (CdTe) quantum dots (QDs) for simultaneous photocatalytic fixation of CO2 and N2 with internal quantum efficiencies approaching the theoretical limits. When this biohybrid system was adopted for protein synthesis, the production rate was comparable to, if not higher than, most conventional crops such as potato, rice and wheat. hv, incident photon; e, electron; h+, hole; Sred/Sox, redox species in reduced/oxidized form.

Danlei Xiang receives the UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship!

Our graduate student Danlei Xiang receives the 2022-2023 UCLA Graduate Division Dissertation Year Fellowship (DYF), among other chemistry & biochemistry graduate student researchers in the department. With a $20,000 stipend plus standard tuition and fees, the DYF is intended to support doctoral students who are within one year of completing and filing their dissertations. Congratulations, Danlei!

Ben Natinsky receives the UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship!

Graduate student Benjamin Natinsky receives the 2021-2022 UCLA Graduate Division Dissertation Year Fellowship (DYF), among the 13 chemistry & biochemistry graduate student researchers in the department. With a $20,000 stipend plus standard tuition and fees, the DYF is intended to support doctoral students who are within one year of completing and filing their dissertations. The departmental news report is here. Congratulations, Ben!

Ben Natinsky received two awards!

Graduate student Ben Natinsky (OG Ben) received the departmental John Stauffer Excellence in Research Award in recognition of his research excellence and productivity, as well as the departmental Michael E. Jung Excellence in Teaching Award in recognition of Ben as excellent teaching assistants.

This summer Ben is participating in the DOE Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) Energy Storage Internship Program at National Energy Technology Laboratory. Congratulations to Ben and enjoy the internship!

First Ph.D. in the group! Congratulations, Rosie!

The first graduate student in the Liu group, Ms. Roselyn Rodrigues, received her Ph.D. in Chemistry along with our departmental Inorganic Chemistry Dissertation Award. Congratulations!

Time flies. It is hard to believe that so many years have passed. Chong keeps recalling the summer of 2017 when Rosie and Chong were opening boxes like Christmas and setting up the lab. Chong is grateful for all the works that Rosie has contributed to the group and the mentoring that she did to other junior students. Best wishes to Rosie for her future career!

Awards from our undergraduate students!

We have multiple excellent undergraduate students receiving recognitions this year. Congratulations!

  1. David Dumas received the Susan Elizabeth Baumgarten Chemistry Endowed Student Award.
  2. Luke Elissiry received the ACS Award for Outstanding Senior in Inorganic Chemistry
  3. David Dumas, Luke Elissiry, and Brianna Mai presented their research at the UCLA Undergraduate Research Showcase.
  4. We have two undergraduates who just graduated: Luke Elissiry will start at UC Berkeley for graduate study and Coco Wu will start at UCSF. Best wishes to their future career!

Francisco Galang is selected into the UC LEADS program

Undergraduate student Francisco “Kiko” Galang (Chem Eng) is selected into the UC LEADS program, one of the most prestigious fellowships award by the University of California system. The departmental news report is here.

Sponsored by this UC LEAD program, Kiko will conduct a remote summer internship in 2021 with the group of Prof. Alexis t. Bell at UC Berkeley. Enjoy the summer!