A new NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC)

The Liu group participates in a newly funded NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC), lead by Washington University in St. Louis (WashU). This 5-year $26M center (EEC-2330245), named as The Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization (CURB), will use a Hybrid Electro-Bio CO2 Utilization System (HEBCUS) that uses electrocatalysis to turn waste carbon dioxide into intermediate substances, such as ethanol, acetate and propionate. These intermediates will be compatible with biomanufacturing systems that can more efficiently convert them into a range of products, such as platform chemicals, biofertilizers and other environmentally responsible materials.

As one thrust leader of this ERC, Chong look forwards to the collaboration and research progresses in the future~~

The news release from WashU can be found here.

Jingwen Sun, Zach Schuman, Jennifer Kim, and Aila Shibao receive the departmental awards!

In the recent departmental award ceremony, multiple group members has been honored with awards for their excellence! Congratulations!

Graduate student Jingwen Sun and Zach Schuman receive the John Stauffer Excellence in Second Year Academics and Research Award. This award is given in recognition of their outstanding performance in coursework, research, and qualifying exam through the first two years of graduate studies.

Graduate student Jennifer Kim receives the Michael E. Jung Excellence in Teaching Award. This award is given to students who have excelled as teaching assistants (TAs), as reflected in undergraduate student evaluations and faculty nomination letters.

Undergraduate student Aila Shibao receives Ravi and Aparna Bikkina Family Undergraduate Research Scholarship. This scholarship will support Aila to conduct summer research in the group in Fall 2024.

Again, congratulations to all the awardees!

Those fantastic graduate student awardees have been recognized in the annual departmental awards ceremony on May 21, 2024.

Xun’s Nature Catalysis work gets highlighted

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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.