Contributors to the Emerging Investigators collection 2024: Part 3

Clare Bakewell received her MChem degree from the University of Leeds (2010), before moving to Imperial College London to conduct a PhD under the supervision of Professors Charlotte Williams and Nick Long, which was followed by an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship. After spending a year working for the start-up company Econic Technologies, she returned to Imperial for a postdoc with Prof Mark Crimmin. In October 2018, she started her independent career as a Ramsay Memorial Fellow at University College London. She joined the Department of Chemistry at King's as a lecturer in October 2021.

Hong Chen is currently a tenured associate professor in the School of the Environment at Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China. He earned his PhD from Stockholm University in 2014 and completed his postdoctoral training at KTH Royal Institute of Technology (2016), Stanford University, and UC Berkeley (2018). His research interests focus on developing sustainable and low-carbon technologies for critical element recovery, resource utilization, and pollution control, utilizing photochemical and electrochemical approaches.

Yuncong Chen obtained his BS and PhD degrees from Nanjing University in 2008 and 2014, respectively. From August 2014 to July 2018, he did his postdoctoral research in Ben Zhong Tang's group at HKUST. In September 2018, he joined School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of Nanjing University as an associate professor, and was promoted to full Professor in 2023. His research interests include developing imaging probes for biological applications and antitumor phototheranostics. He has won honours including outstanding doctoral dissertation of Jiangsu Province. He is currently an associate editor of Luminescence.

Zhijie Chen received his BS (2012) degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and PhD (2018) from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University. He joined the Department of Chemistry at Zhejiang University as a ZJU100 Young Professor in 2022. His research interests are related to the synthesis and applications of functional porous frameworks. He has authored more than 100 papers including in Science, Nat. Synth., Nat. Chem., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Chem, Adv. Mater., Chem. Rev. His accomplishments have been recognized by honours including MIT TR35 Asia Pacific, Materials Research Society Postdoctoral Award.

Matthew Cliffe is Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. He obtained his DPhil from the University of Oxford and was a Junior Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. He joined the University of Nottingham in 2018 as the inaugural Hobday Fellow. His current research interests focus on coordination framework compounds, including metal pseudohalides and metal–organic frameworks, and their magnetic and quantum properties.

Xiaofeng Cui received his PhD from China University of Petroleum (Beijing) in 2014 under the supervision of Prof. Guiyuan Jiang. In the same year, he entered Anqing Normal University as an associate professor until 2021. During this period, he worked as a visiting scholar at the University of Science and Technology of China from 2016 to 2018 in the group of Prof. Yujie Xiong. He then joined the Xiong group at Anhui Normal University in 2021. Currently, his research focuses on the development of functional metal nanoclusters for photo- and electrochemical activation of small molecules, inspired by enzymatic systems.

Shaoqiang Dong joined the Institute of Molecular Aggregation Science at Tianjin University in 2020 as a Professor. He received his PhD from Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, CAS, in 2014. Then, he worked as a research fellow in Prof. Chunyan Chi's group at the National University of Singapore. In 2021, he was awarded the National Young Talents Project and started his independent work. Currently, his research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of organic conjugated materials with topological structures and their applications in supramolecular chemistry, as well as the development of air-stable novel high-spin and chiral radical luminescent materials.

Joseph Fournier is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. He received his PhD from Yale University in 2015 working under the supervision of Mark Johnson and was an Arnold O. Beckman postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago in the lab of Andrei Tokmakoff. He was named a 2022 Flygare Award winner for outstanding contributions to molecular spectroscopy by an early career independent researcher. The Fournier lab leverages both gas-phase and condensed-phase spectroscopies to study molecular interactions and reaction dynamics, in particular, hydrogen bonding interactions and charge transfer processes.

Dechao Geng has been a Professor at Tianjin Key Laboratory of Molecular Optoelectronic Sciences, Department of Chemistry, School of Science, Tianjin University since 2019. Before that, he had postdoctoral experience at the National University of Singapore and Singapore University of Technology and Design. He received his PhD from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015. His research interests mainly focus on the chemical vapor deposition synthesis of 2D materials and their further properties and applications.

Elumalai Gnanamani is an assistant professor at IIT-Roorkee. He earned his PhD in 2013 from Pondicherry University under Prof. C. R. Ramanathan. He completed postdoctoral studies with Prof. S. Luo and Prof. J.-P. Cheng at ICCAS (2013–2014), and later with Prof. Trost (2015–2020) at Stanford as a Fulbright and Stanford Postdoctoral Fellow. At Stanford, he also collaborated with Prof. Zare in microdroplet chemistry. A recipient of the Fulbright Award, Developing Country Award for International Researchers, and Best Mexico Patent Innovator Award, he is an associate editor of Current Indian Science. His research spans asymmetric catalysis, total synthesis, and microdroplet chemistry.

Peijun Guo received his BS from Tsinghua University with highest honours in 2009, and his MS and PhD from Northwestern University in 2011 and 2016, respectively, all in Materials Science and Engineering. After spending three years at Argonne National Lab as an Enrico Fermi Named Fellow, Peijun joined the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and the Energy Sciences Institute at Yale University. The Guo group develops and employs optical spectroscopy and microscopy to understand the structure–property relationships in emerging soft semiconductors. His lab is also interested in finding new applications of emerging, solution-processable materials by tailoring light–matter interactions at the nanoscale.

Bin Han received his PhD in environmental science and chemical engineering from the South China University of Technology. He currently works as a professor at the School of Ecology, Environment and Resources, Guangdong University of Technology. His main research interests include environmental functional materials, chemicals and technologies for water treatment and artificial photosynthesis.

Raúl Hernández Sánchez is currently the Norman Hackerman Welch Young Investigator Junior Chair, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Rice University. He was born in Chihuahua, México. He carried out his graduate studies at Harvard University under the supervision of Professor Theodore A. Betley. In 2016, Raúl moved to Columbia University as a CNI Postdoctoral Fellow and worked under the mentorship of Professor Colin Nuckolls. At Rice University, his group's research interests lie at the interface between synthetic organic and inorganic chemistry creating catalysts for small molecule activation at polynuclear reaction sites, developing novel contorted aromatics, and designing anion receptors for environmental remediation.

James Hodgkinson completed his PhD under the supervision of Professor David Spring (Chemistry) and Professor Martin Welch (Biochemistry) at the University of Cambridge. After a Junior Research Fellowship (Trinity College) with Professor David Spring (2012–2016), James started his independent career at the University of Leicester. James was promoted to Associate Professor in Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology in 2022. His research interests are in the design and synthesis of chemical probes to study biology with a current emphasis on epigenetics and histone deacetylase corepressor complexes.

Lijun Jiang is currently a Professor at School of Life Sciences, Central China Normal University (CCNU). She obtained her PhD from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2017 under the supervision of Professor Ka-Leung Wong. Subsequently, she joined the laboratory of Professor Nicholas Long at Imperial College London as a visiting researcher. In 2020, she became a Research Assistant Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Later, in December 2021, she began her independent career at CCNU. Her research interests focus on chemical biology with the main emphasis on the design of chemical tools for applications in biomolecular imaging and cancer theranostics.

Xinchen Kang received his BS degree from Shandong University in 2011 and PhD degree from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS) in 2016. He worked as a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Manchester from 2017 to 2020. He has worked as a professor in ICCAS since June 2021. His research fields include solution chemistry, materials chemistry and electrocatalysis.

Hongkyung Lee is an associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Yonsei University, South Korea. He earned his PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from KAIST in 2016 and conducted postdoctoral research at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) from 2017 to 2019. Throughout his career, Prof. Lee has made significant contributions to the field of advanced battery materials and multi-scale interfacial engineering in Li–metal, Li–sulfur, and Li–air batteries, publishing 92 peer-reviewed articles and securing 22 patents. Currently, his research focuses on dendrite-free electroplating, electrolytes for fast-charging batteries, and imaging-driven battery diagnosis.

Chunming Liu is an assistant professor at the School of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Akron. He obtained a BS in Chemistry from Nanjing University and PhD in Chemistry from Texas A &M University. He received postdoctoral training at Cornell University before joining the University of Akron. His current research is focused on single-molecule studies of photoredox catalysis and polymer chemistry.

Xinyan Liu is a Research Professor at Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences (IFFS), University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC). Having obtained her bachelor and PhD degrees from Tsinghua University and Stanford University in 2013 and 2018 respectively, she worked at Meta Inc. for two years as a Research Data Scientist before she joined UESTC full time. Dr Liu's research interests have been mainly focused on energy chemistry-related interdisciplinary study combining theoretical simulations and artificial intelligence, such as electrocatalysis, catalyst high-throughput screening, and battery prognosis.

Marek B. Majewski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Concordia University in Montréal. He completed his BSc at the University of Saskatchewan before traveling to Vancouver to complete his PhD with Michael O. Wolf at the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining Concordia, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University working with Michael Wasielewski, Joseph Hupp, and Omar Farha. The Solar Energy Conversion Group at Concordia studies functionalized nanostructured semiconductor surfaces for photoelectrochemical cells, the growth mechanisms of semiconductor nanocrystals, and the optoelectronic properties of a wide range of inorganic materials.

Fanke Meng is currently a professor of the State Key Laboratory of Organometallic Chemistry at Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry. He carried out his graduate studies at Boston College under the supervision of Professor Amir Hoveyda. After completing his PhD in 2015, he stayed in the same laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow. He started his independent career in 2016, developing a series of new approaches for cobalt-catalyzed enantioselective transformations.

Adam Michalchuk is an assistant professor at the University of Birmingham (UK) and a Wilhelm-Ostwald Fellow at the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM). He received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh (2019) before moving to the BAM as a postdoctoral researcher and later as a senior scientist. He took up his current position in 2022. His research explores the mechanisms that underpin mechanically initiated reactions in the solid state and was the recipient of the ISIS Neutron and Muon Impact Award (2022) for his work in this field.

John J. Molloy was born in Glasgow and carried out his MChem (2014) and doctoral studies (2018) at the University of Strathclyde with Prof. Allan J. B. Watson. After a secondment to the University of St Andrews he joined the group of Prof. Ryan Gilmour as an Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doctoral Research Fellow. He started his independent career at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in the Biomolecular Systems department (2021) supported by a Liebig Stipendium from VCI.

Sandip Murarka pursued his PhD from WWU Münster under the supervision of Prof. Armido Studer (2013). Afterwards, he worked as a Max-Planck postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Herbert Waldmann at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, Dortmund (2013–2016). Following a year-long stay (2016–2017) as a Team Leader at Syngene International Limited, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, India as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to the post of Associate Professor in June 2022. His current research activities include the study of novel activation modes and the development of sustainable synthetic transformations.

Elias Nakouzi is a materials scientist in the Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. His research interests include nanomaterial crystallization, interactions, and assembly for applications in chemical separations, materials synthesis, and environmental management. Previously, Nakouzi was a Pauling Fellow and led the development of 3D atomic force microscopy at PNNL for investigating interfacial solution structure. Nakouzi earned his PhD in physical chemistry from Florida State University, where he studied biomimetic crystallization, and his MSc in physical chemistry from the American University of Beirut.

Yuji Nishii received his PhD in 2015 from Osaka University (Japan) under the supervision of Prof. Kazushi Mashima. He worked as an Assistant Professor from 2015 to 2020 and as a Lecturer from 2020 to 2023 at Osaka University with Prof. Masahiro Miura. Since 2023, he has been working at Osaka University as an Associate Professor with Prof. Koji Hirano. His research focuses on the development of efficient catalytic reaction systems adopting organocatalysts and transition-metal complexes.

Matteo Savastano has been an associate professor of general and inorganic chemistry at the University San Raffaele Roma, Rome, Italy since 2023. He obtained his PhD in chemistry at the University of Florence, Italy, with Prof. Antonio Bianchi (2018), and spent a few more years there as a post-doctoral researcher. He has been visiting the Universities of Jaén and València (Spain). Influenced by both Prof. Antonio Bianchi and Prof. Enrique García-España, Matteo maintains a focus on the supramolecular chemistry of anions, both from a structural and a thermodynamic viewpoint. Polyiodides are his favourite anions, an interest he is fairly recognized for.

Li Shao received her PhD from Zhejiang University in 2019 under the supervision of Prof. Feihe Huang. After that, she conducted her postdoctoral research at University of Missouri-Columbia with Prof. Jerry L. Atwood. She then continued her postdoctoral research at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) with Dr Chun-Long Chen and Prof. James De Yoreo. She is now a principal investigator in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. Her research interests focus on the construction of functional polymers using supramolecular strategy.

Wangqiang Shen is currently an associate professor at Hefei University of Technology. He was born in Anhui Province, China and obtained his PhD from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in 2019. Then he began his postdoctoral research under the supervision of Prof. Xing Lu in HUST (2019–2021). His main research interests focus on synthesis and characterization of novel hybrid carbon materials with applications in catalysis fields. He has coauthored over 60 papers in international journals.

Samanvaya Srivastava is an Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA. He completed his undergraduate degree at IIT Kanpur and his PhD with Prof. Lynden Archer at Cornell University. After his PhD, Samanvaya pursued postdoctoral research with Prof. Matthew Tirrell at The University of Chicago. Samanvaya's research interests are in investigating the influence of diverse intermolecular interactions on soft material structure and properties. He has published 50+ research articles and has received several awards, including the RSC Researcher Mobility Grant, the AIChE 35 under 35 award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the ACS PMSE Young Investigator Award.

Hideaki Takano received his PhD from Waseda University in 2020 under the supervision of Professor Takanori Shibata. During his doctoral studies, he was a visiting student at the University of Cambridge, working with Professor Robert J. Phipps. After completing his PhD, he joined the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (ICReDD) at Hokkaido University as a postdoctoral researcher, and he was subsequently promoted to the position of specially appointed assistant professor in 2021. In 2022, he became an assistant professor at Nagoya University. His research focuses on developing new catalytic reactions for the synthesis of novel π-conjugated compounds.

Yuan-Yuan Tang is currently a professor at the Ordered Matter Science Research Center, Nanchang University, China. He received his PhD from Southeast University under the supervision of Prof. Yu-Meng You. His research interests focus on the design of molecular ferroelectrics through various chemical strategies, as well as the characterization of their ferroelectric domains and domain switching via piezoelectric force microscopy.

Valerie Vaissier Welborn is an assistant professor in theoretical and computational chemistry in the department of chemistry at Virginia Tech. She obtained her PhD in physics from the Centre for Doctoral Training in Theory and Simulation of Materials (TSM-CDT) at Imperial College London under the supervision of Jenny Nelson, Piers Barnes and James Kirkpatrick. She was a postdoctoral scholar at MIT (2015–2016) and UC Berkeley (2017–2019) under the supervision of Troy Van Voorhis and Teresa Head-Gordon, respectively. Her research focuses on modelling the structure and dynamics of macromolecules in polar environments with applications to human health and energy.

Danyu Xia is currently an associate professor at Shanxi University. She received her PhD degree in Chemistry from Zhejiang University under the supervision of Prof. Feihe Huang in June 2017. Her current research interests are focused on fluorescent supramolecular materials, chiral liquid crystals and supramolecular adsorbents.

Weinan Xu has been assistant professor in the School of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering at the University of Akron since 2019. He obtained his PhD degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and did postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins University. His current research is focused on the development of functional/sustainable polymer nanocomposites and their advanced manufacturing, with applications in electronics, biomedicine, and energy storage. He has been recognized with several awards, including the DARPA Young Faculty Award, Polymer Processing Society Early Career Award, and Best PhD Thesis Award from Sigma Xi and Georgia Tech.

Jian-Heng Ye received his MS degree in 2015 from Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He then moved to Sichuan University and completed his PhD in organic chemistry with Prof. Da-Gang Yu. In 2019, he joined the group of Prof. Frank Glorius at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow. Since 2022, he has been working at Sichuan University as a professor. His current research focuses on radical chemistry and the exploration of new fundamental reactions that directly convert abundant feedstocks into value-added products.

Wei You obtained his Bachelor degree from Tsinghua University in 2011 and PhD degree in organic chemistry from Indiana University, Bloomington in 2016. Then he started as a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University. In November 2019, Dr You joined the Key Laboratory of Engineering Plastics at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences as a principal investigator. His research interests are focused on developing novel polymer synthetic methods and preparing functional membrane materials.

Chengjian Zhang received his bachelor's degree from Shandong University in 2016. He then received his PhD degree in Prof. Xinghong Zhang's group from Zhejiang University. From 2019 to 2020, he studied as a visiting PhD student in Professors Xiaoshuang Feng's and Yves Gnanou's group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology University. He then became an Associate Professor at Zhejiang University in 2021. His current research interests focus on the synthesis of sustainable polymers and catalysis in polymerizations.

Pengchao Zhang is a full professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology (WUT). He received his PhD degree from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, under the supervision of Prof. Lei Jiang and Prof. Shutao Wang. Prior to arriving at WUT, he performed postdoctoral research with Prof. Lidong Qin at the Houston Methodist Research Institute/Weill Medical College of Cornell University. His current research interests mainly focus on the development of superspreading-based scalable fabrication techniques of advanced polymer films for ion sieving, functional separators of rechargeable batteries, and seawater desalination.

Yifan Zhang obtained his PhD from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS) in 2016. He is currently a research professor in the Photochemistry Laboratory at ICCAS and serves as the principal investigator of a research subgroup. His research focuses on the synthesis and applications of photoresponsive chemical species across length scales ranging from 1 nm to 100 microns. This includes the precise synthesis of functional polymeric compounds, the hierarchically precise construction of photo-functional micelles, and the development of systems enabling light-controlled, continuous mechanoresponsive movement and positioning of organic crystalline matter.

Yinlong Zhu is a Professor in the Institute for Frontier Science at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (2022–present). He received his PhD from the College of Chemical Engineering at Nanjing Tech University in 2017 and then worked as a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow at Monash University, Australia (2017–2021). His current research focuses on the development of functional oxide materials as high-performance electrocatalysts for applications in various electrochemical energy conversion and storage technologies, such as fuel cells, metal–air batteries and electrolyzers.

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