Chemical Engineering Receives Four NSF Awards

Yale’s Department of Chemical Engineering announced four awards over the past month, including an NSF CAREER award to assistant professor Chinedum Osuji, and a $1.7M research award to a team of researchers led by professor Lisa Pfefferle.

 

Osuji is one of two Yale Engineering professors to receive the CAREER award from the Faculty Early Career Development Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) this year. The NSF CAREER Award is one of the highest honors for young faculty members, recognizing and supporting the early career activities of teacher/scholars. Osuji’s award for "Directed Self-Assembly of Block Copolymers by High Magnetic Fields" has applications ranging from photovoltaics to templates for nanomaterials synthesis and the production of high efficiency separations membranes.

 

A 3-year, $1.7 M research grant was awarded to a multidisciplinary team of researchers, lead by professor Lisa Pfefferle, and including professors Chinedum Osusji and André Taylor (Chemical Engineering), Ron Coifman (Mathematics), and Sohrab Ismail-Beigi (Applied Physics) for their proposal entitled, “New Paradigm Solar Cell Format based on Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Nanomaterial Assembly." According to Pfefferle, increasing solar cell efficiency and affordability are critical objectives for achieving energy sustainability. If successfully executed, their work to develop new materials and processes will not only enable higher efficiency and more cost-effective solar cells, but will have broad technical impact extending from thermoelectric energy harvesting to light emitting diodes, photodetectors and advanced chemical separations.

 

Other NSF award recipients include assistant professor of environmental engineering, Julie Zimmerman, and department chair, Menachem Elimelech, for "Design of Safer Carbon Nanotubes: The Impact of Surface Modifications on Toxicity and Environmental Fate and Transport," and assistant professor Corey Wilson for "Integrated Protein Design for Non-natural Electron-Transfer Systems." “The overarching goal of my research program is to translate our understanding of the fundamental principles of physical biochemistry into useful processes, devices, therapies, and diagnostics that will benefit society,” says Wilson.