Research

Currently, we are actively recruiting at multiple levels. Please see Openings for more information.

Porosity is ubiquitous, from naturally formed systems (e.g., shale rocks, wood, and human bones) to synthetic materials (e.g., metal-organic frameworks and molecular cages). Nanoporous materials are unique in providing a tailored pore environment and interfaces down to the nanoscale, and they hold great promise in helping to address crucial challenges in energy, healthcare, and sustainability. Specific applications include energy storage, chemical separations, carbon capture, sensing, catalysis, nano-manufacturing, drug delivery, and tissue regeneration.

Quantum and molecular-level modeling and statistical mechanical theories are central in the efforts to achieve an atomic-level understanding of nanoporous systems, in length and time scales that are inaccessible to state-of-the-art experiments. On the other hand, artificial intelligence (AI), provides a data-based solution to reveal important structure-property relationships that are difficult to discover with conventional methods.

At the moment, we have three general research directions aimed at pushing the boundaries of discovery, design, and characterization of nanoporous materials and confined systems:

• Physics-informed machine learning for materials discovery & design. We develop advanced machine learning, materials informatics, and molecular simulation methods to accelerate computational nanoporous materials discovery and design for clean energy and chemical separation applications.
  

• Next-gen experimental characterization platform for nanoporous materials. We develop advanced theories and tools for experimental characterization of complex nanoporous materials. The goal is to enable efficient and interpretable materials discovery in self-driving lab and high-throughput experiments.
  

• Computational and theoretical studies of confined phases and reactions. We develop realistic statistical mechanical theories and simulation methods to understand complex phase transitions and chemical reactions in confinement, with applications in crystallization and nano-manufacturing of drugs.