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

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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!

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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

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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!

2020 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award

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We are excited to be awarded the 2020 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award! This project is in collaboration with UCLA postdoc alum Prof. Nanette Boyle‘s group at Colorado School of Mines, with the project title “Solar-augmented direct air capture of methane using methanotrophic bacteria”.

A fellow of Scialog: Negative Emissions Science, Chong is grateful for the funding support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Research Corporation for Science Advancement.

The departmental news report can be found here.

We need postdocs

The recent influx of research grants supporting the next 5 years enables the Liu lab to host additional postdoctoral researchers in the Liu group. The candidates are expected to have expertise in either of the two areas: (1) inorganic materials synthesis and electrochemical catalysis; (2) bio-based materials and microbiology.

Please contact Chong for more information: chongliu@chem.ucla.edu

Chong is invited to give a Nanoscience Global Lecture presented by Nano Letters on Oct. 23rd, 2020

Chong is invited to give a Nanoscience Global Lecture webinar presented by Nano Letters on Oct. 23rd, along with Prof. Tao Zhang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Naomi Halas from Rice University. Feel free to register here.

In celebration of the upcoming 20th anniversary of the journal, the Nano Letters team is excited to announce the launch of the new Nanoscience Global Lecture. This monthly series features engaging talks from leaders across nanoscience research highlighting exciting nanoscience progress. Each event will include two featured talks as well as a talk from an early career researcher. 

Oct. 23rd lecture is the second in its series. The first one took place on Sep. 25, 2020, featuring Prof. Paul Alivisatos, Prof. Steven Chu, and Prof. Laura Na Liu as the speakers.

Chong named as 2020 Scialog Fellow on Negative Emission Science

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Chong was recently named as 2020 Scialog Fellow on Negative Emission Science, co-sponsored by Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Chong and other Scialog fellows will join a conference that explores how to advance fundamental science in the design of novel approaches for rapidly removing and utilizing or sequestering greenhouse gases. As of 2020, this conference will be held virtually.

Some funding updates

2020 is not a bad year for the Liu Group so far, as the Liu Group has been awarded a few grants from external funding agencies:

  1. As we reported earlier, the Liu Group is part of the NSF CCI Phase I: Center for Integrated Catalysis, a multi-group center developing spatially separated and temporally switchable catalysts.
  2. The Liu Group is awarded by the NSF Division of Chemistry with a 3-year standard grant: CAS: Ambient Electrochemical Activation of Light Alkanes with Early Transition Metal-Oxo Species.
  3. The Liu Group is awarded by the NSF Division of Chemistry with a 2-year EAGER grant: EAGER: Nanostructure-enabled solution catalysis with concentration gradients.
  4. The Liu Group forges an industrial sponsorship with BASF California Research Alliance (CARA).
  5. Last but not least, the Liu Group receives the NIH NIGMS R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA), titled as “Spatiotemporal control of concentration gradients with electrochemistry in extracellular space”. This is a 5-year project about our foray into the interface between electrochemistry and microbiology!

We are grateful for all the research support! Check out our exciting research progresses in the years to come!