News

2022

April

• The DOE BES ECN webinar on grant writing for early career scientists was a great success, with a record number of attendees over Zoom (~2000). Congratulations to the organizing committee and huge thanks to our four exceptional speakers. The recorded video and presentation slides are available on BES ECN page.
• I will be moderating the upcoming DOE BES ECN webinar: Grant Writing for Early Career Scientists. The webinar will be held on Tuesday, April 12 at 2-3pm EDT (11am-12pm PDT) on Zoom (registration link). The webinar will comprise short presentations and a live Q&A with our four panelists who will provide thoughts and best practices for securing funding from government and non-profit sources drawn from their own experiences. The webinar is free and open to the public. I look forward to seeing you over Zoom!

2021

November

• I will see you at the AIChE Annual Meeting in Boston! I will be giving a poster at the “Meet the Faculty Candidates Poster Session” on 11/7 (1 PM EDT, Sunday), in addition to one talk:
  11/8, Monday, 3:54 PM – 4:06 PM EDT, “Two-Dimensional Energy Histograms as Features for Machine Learning to Predict Adsorption in Metal-Organic Frameworks” at the Faculty Candidates in COMSEF/Area 1a, Session 2, Location: Marriott Copley Place - Salon A/B

October

• The team I led representing the Nanoporous Materials Genome Center was recognized as one of the nine winning teams in the 2021 Student and Postdoc Team Science Contest. Yangzesheng (Andrew) Sun and I gave an oral talk at the 2021 EFRC-Hub-CMS-CCS Virtual Principal Investigators’ Meeting. The talk title is “Integrated Computational Engineering Towards Accelerated Screening and Optimization for Nanoporous Materials”.

September

• I was invited to give a 30 mins talk at The 2nd Meeting of the Special Interest Group in Non-Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics on the uniqueness of the local pressure tensor. Recorded talk is available here.

June

• I was invited to give a 1 hour talk at the ATOMS virtual seminar on “Pressure tensor at nanoscale: theory, applications and challenges”. Recorded talk is available at ATOMS YouTube channel.
• I gave a virtual oral talk on “Two-Dimensional Energy Histograms as Features for Machine Learning to Predict Adsorption in Metal-Organic Frameworks” at 2021 Midwest Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics Conference. It was great to meet new and old friends there!

May

• I was invited to give a talk at NCSU CBE’s 2021 Spring virtual commencement ceremony. The full video can be found here.

March

• My first-authored book chapter on the current advances in characterization of nano-porous materials just got published online and here is the link to the full book! My chapter [PDF] focuses particularly on characterization of pore size distribution and specific surface area of porous materials. Classical methods, modern molecular methods and those related to machine learning techniques are all discussed!
• I was chosen as the winner for the 2020 James K. Ferrell Outstanding Ph.D. Graduate Award! This award recognizes an outstanding graduate of CBE Ph.D. program who distinguishes him/herself in scholarship, teaching and service. The winner of the Award will be invited to deliver a five-minute talk at the departmental graduation ceremony in May.

February

• My first-authored paper has been published in the Journal of Chemical Physics. The title is “Can we define a unique microscopic pressure in inhomogeneous fluids?” [PDF]. In this paper, for the first time, we show strong evidence that it is possible to define a unique microscopic pressure, a property that has been considered ambiguous at the nanoscale since 1950.

January

• I was accepted as a AAAS member through the AAAS/Science Program for Excellence in Science. This program provides me with a one-year membership for AAAS, which includes a free subscription to the digital version of Journal Science.

2020

December

• I was invited to give a talk on the uniqueness of the microscopic pressure tensor at the Statistical Mechanics & Molecular Simulations (STMS) Seminar Series, hosted by Prof. Amir Haji-Akbari (Yale) and Prof. Sapna Sarupria (Minnesota).

November

• I was invited to give a 110-minute guest lecture in the course Molecular Simulation of Materials in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University.
• The paper in collaboration with Prof. Carlos Vega’s group has been published in Journal of Chemical Physics. The title is “The Young–Laplace equation for a solid–liquid interface”.
• I gave a pre-recorded talk at the 2020 AIChE Annual Meeting and I had a great time meeting some friends there virtually!

October

• I gave a virtual poster on MOFdb at the 2020 Nanoporous Materials Genome Center (NMGC) All-Hands Meeting.

August

• I joined Prof. Randy Snurr’s group at Northwestern University as a postdoc fellow!

July

• My first-author paper has been published in J. Chem. Theory Comput.. The title is “Microscopic Pressure Tensor in Cylindrical Geometry: Pressure of Water in a Carbon Nanotube”.

May

• I successfully defended my PhD thesis!
• The paper in collaboration with Prof. Saad Khan’s group has been published in ACS Appl. Polym. Mater.. The title is “Designing Intrinsically Microporous Polymer (PIM-1) Microfibers with Tunable Morphology and Porosity via Controlling Solvent/Nonsolvent/Polymer Interactions”.

April

• Our Reply to the Comment on the microscopic pressure tensor has been published in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

March

• The paper in collaboration with Prof. Stefano Menegatti’s group has been published in Journal of Materials Chemistry B. The title is “Modified gaphene oxide (GO) particles in peptide hydrogels: a hybrid system enabling scheduled delivery of synergistic combinations of chemotherapeutics”.

January

• My first-author paper has been published in Langmuir. The title is “Conformal Sites Theory for Adsorbed Films on Energetically Heterogeneous Surfaces”.
• The paper in collaboration with Prof. Gregory Parsons’s group has been published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A. The title is “Fabrication of a freestanding metal organic framework predominant hollow fiber mat and its potential applications in gas separation and catalysis”.