Aionics advisors Profs. Yuzhang Li and Chibueze Amanchukwu receive NSF CAREER Awards

Two members of the Aionics Scientific Advisory Board are celebrating this week. Prof. Chibueze Amanchukwu of UChicago and Prof. Yuzhang Li of UCLA have both received the prestigious NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award — one of the nation’s top awards for early-stage faculty members beginning their careers as independent researchers.

According to the University of Chicago’s announcement:

“Amanchukwu received the award for his proposal on multifunctional electrolytes, an essential component in next-generation batteries.’This award spotlights our ideas, and I feel truly honored to receive it, Amanchukwu said.  It provides significant funding over multiple years that will support our electrolyte research as well as our outreach efforts. It will allow us to bring more underrepresented minorities into STEM, both here in Chicago and in my home country of Nigeria.”

According to UCLA’s announcement:

“[Li’s award will] support research to develop high-energy, fast-charging and efficient lithium batteries — an energy- storage technology considered critical to decreasing society’s dependence on fossil fuels. Specifically, Li will use cryogenic electron microscopy — an advanced imaging technique that implements electron beams to create images of frozen samples — to unravel the nanoscale processes that drive the assembly of lithium atoms into a 3D structure, a process called electrodeposition. Insights from the research could help overcome existing obstacles in lithium electrodeposition by offering a roadmap to improve the process.”