(2al) Engineered Multiscale Materials from Biopolymers for Sustainable Agriculture and Manufacturing

My goal is to establish a world-class laboratory conducting research on circular materials and their fabrication across scales from nano to macro and to train the next class of leaders in science and engineering. By combining fundamental principles of chemistry, environmental chemistry, and materials science and nanotechnology, my lab will develop new technologies to tackle the significant challenges that our society will face in the following decades, including feeding a 10 billion people world, reducing the use of resources, increasing material circularity and providing more inclusive education. At the beginning of my career, my focus will be on precision agriculture, enhancing food security and food safety, and promoting sustainable manufacturing. Conventional practices such as make-take-discard of plastics result in an increasing accumulation of macro-, micro- and nanoplastics in the environment. Besides, the emerging engineered materials are intensively developed and fabricated – lacking sufficient risk and life cycle assessments – for their novel properties and applications. These legacy and emerging materials raise socioeconomic concerns about environmental and human health. To secure a sustainable and innovative future, I aim to design and fabricate biodegradable and biocompatible micro/nano-enabled products from biopolymers. Initial efforts will be in the form of 3 major aims:1) Fundamental investigation of biopolymers from molecular interaction to biomimetic multiscale structural manipulation. 2) Development of biomimetic biopolymeric capsules for agricultural, biomedical, and micro-robotic applications. 3) Design and assembly of two-dimensional (2D) biopolymers for environmental and biomedical applications. My Ph.D. thesis was on the multiscale assembly of novel nanomaterials and 2D nanochannels. I am currently working on natural protein-based microcapsules for advanced agriculture and food security.

Teaching Experience

As a postdoctoral associate, I served as a mentor for Institute at Brown for Environment and Society - Leadership Alliance Program. In this summer program, I co-led a study group of 6 undergraduate students (from different universities across the US) and mentored them on implementing a summer research project, writing a research abstract, and developing an oral or poster presentation. I prepared and hosted/co-hosted 16 study sessions on topics ranging from “how to frame your research problem” to “writing a broader impact statement”. As a result, all 6 students successfully presented their summer projects at the 2020 Leadership Alliance National Symposium. After this program, I stay connected with 3 students and offered help to their graduate school applications. And I am delighted to see one of them has been recently admitted to a PhD program at University of South Carolina. This teaching endeavor helped me improve my teaching strategies and communications skills with both the students and their faculty mentors. Besides, I developed versatile skills in using virtual teaching platforms.

As a PhD student at Brown, I served as a teaching assistant for CHEM 0100 - Introductory Chemistry and CHEM 0330 - Equilibrium, Rate, and Structure. During these courses, I facilitated problem sessions for two semesters. Instead of passive learning, I tried to promote active learning among students by Think-Pair-Share and other strategies.

Teaching Interests

As an interdisciplinary materials scientist, I believe that my background and mentoring experience at MIT and Brown University will enable me to teach core courses in disciplines such as materials science and engineering, chemical engineering, environmental sciences, etc., including courses related to chemical and transport processes in the environment, environmental technologies and human health, and characterizing nano and composite materials structure, at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

I would also like to develop more specialized courses, such as “Advanced Sustainable Nanotechnology”, and “Exploring Sustainability at Different Scales” that focuses on sustainable design and the latest progress of nanotechnologies on green synthesis, remediation, and recycling.