Introducing our Inaugural Early Career Advisory Board

Abstract

An early start: Please join us in welcoming the inaugural members of our Early Career Advisory Board: Shaojun Guo, Ying Jiang, Roxanne Kieltyka, Xian Jun Loh, Pralay Santra, Wooyoung Shim, Luisa Whittaker-Brooks, and Nobuhiro Yanai. Starting from January, 2020, all three journals published with the Asian Chemical Editorial Society (ACES), ChemNanoMat, Chemistry-An Asian Journal, and the Asian Journal or Organic Chemistry, will expand their advisory boards to include early career researchers. We are excited to have such an excellent group of scientists join this new initiative! You can read more about the background and accomplishments of the new ChemNanoMat Early Career Advisory Board members in the biographies below. Shaojun Guo is a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Prof. Guo is known particularly for his work on nano/sub-nano/atomic materials for catalysis and energy applications. Since he started his independent career, he has published more than 100 papers, including 14 in Nature, Science and Nature/Science/Cell sister journals. He was recognized as a highly cited researcher (2014-2019) in Chemistry (2014-2019) and Materials Science (2019) by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics. He has been honored with numerous awards, including Xplorer Prize, Journal of Materials Chemistry Lectureship Award, Beijing Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholar, Elsevier Chinese Most Cited Researcher, Young Analyst Prize of China, Young Scientist Prize for China Electrochemical Society and ISE-Elsevier Prize for Applied Electrochemistry and Oppenheimer Fellowship, etc. Ying Jiang is a Professor in the College of Chemistry at the Beijing Normal University where she has been a faculty member since June 2019. Ying received her B.S. in Chemistry in 2006, followed by a M.S. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2009. She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst under the supervision of Prof. Vincent M. Rotello in 2016, and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Florida under the supervision of Prof. Weihong Tan in 2018. She is actively involved in the area of bionanotechnology, and her research program focuses on both fundamental and applied aspects of DNA-based sensors, aptamers, electrochemical sensors, and multifunctional materials. Roxanne Kieltyka studied Materials Chemistry at the University of Toronto and obtained her PhD in Chemistry from McGill University in 2009, working in the group of Hanadi Sleiman on platinum-based G-quadruplex DNA binders. During her postdoctoral work in the group of Bert Meijer at the Eindhoven University of Technology she prepared ureidopyrimidinone-based supramolecular hydrogels. Since 2013, she is an assistant professor in the Supramolecular and Biomaterials Chemistry Research group at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her research involves the development of supramolecular biomaterials, with a focus on the use of squaramides, for applications in drug delivery and 3D cell culture. In 2018, she was named one of the Talented 12 by C&EN and in 2019, she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant. Xian Jun Loh completed his basic and postgraduate studies at the National University of Singapore. A polymer chemist by training, he is currently the Director of Graduate Affairs in the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), A*STAR and Head of Department of the Soft Materials Department at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), A*STAR. He is concurrently an Adjunct Associate Professor in the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University. As a pioneer in the area of biodegradable thermogels, he is highly knowledgeable in developing these materials for various applications spanning biomedical, engineering, cosmetics, personal care and food. His scientific contributions have earned him the position of Fellowship in both Fitzwiliam College in the University of Cambridge as well as in the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is also the current Vice President and member of the Executive Committee of the Singapore National Institute of Chemistry. He was awarded the Highly Cited Researcher for his work. With his extensive experience in authoring >200 journal papers, 38 patents and know-hows, >30 book chapters and 7 books, he currently sits on several editorial boards of international journals as an expert in his area. He has also successfully helped in the commercialization of 8 different products and is always interested in the translation of science to products. Pralay Santra is a scientist at Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences (CeNS), Bengaluru, India. His primary research focuses on nanomaterials for clean energy harvesting, particularly towards investigation of electronic and optical properties of heterostructured nanomaterials and growing sub-nanometer thick interfaces by atomic layer deposition. He is rigorously involved in public outreach programs to an audience of high school and undergraduate students. Pralay earned his Bachelor's in Science from St. Xavier′s College, Kolkata (2003), and PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (2011), both in Chemistry. He then went on to do his postdoctoral research at the University of Notre Dame (2013), Stanford University (2015), and Uppsala University (2016) before joining CeNS in 2016. Dr. Pralay has authored, corresponding-authored, and co-authored more than 35 papers published in scientific journals of international repute. Wooyoung Shim received B.S. and his M.S. degree from the department of metallurgical engineering at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea in 2004 and 2006 respectively, and Ph.D. degree from the department of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, Illinois, USA in 2012. After his Ph.D., he worked at the department of chemistry & chemical biology, Harvard University, as a postdoctoral fellow from 2012 to 2014. He is now an associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering, IBS (Institute of Basic Science) professor, and director of the Center for Multi-dimensional Materials at Yonsei University. Luisa Whittaker-Brooks is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Utah whose research focuses on synthesizing and elucidating the functional properties of well-defined and high-quality organic and inorganic materials for applications in photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, batteries, spintronics, and electronics. Her research also focuses on generating a fundamental understanding of what happens at the interfaces (an aspect that is often overlooked in materials chemistry and physics) of organic-inorganic hybrid materials in order to control charge (spin) injection, transport, manipulation, and detection in devices. Dr. Whittaker-Brooks received her B.S. degree in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Panama. Under a Fulbright Fellowship, she received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Chemistry from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University. She was the recipient of the 2013 L'Oréal Fellowship for Women in Science Award and the 2015 Marion Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Recently, she was named a Scialog and Cottrell Fellow by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), a Talented 12 by C&EN, and a GERA Ovshinsky Energy Fellow by the American Physical Society (APS). She is also the recipient of a Department of Energy Early Career Award. Nobuhiro Yanai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Kyushu University, Japan. He earned his Ph.D. from Kyoto University in 2011 with Prof. Susumu Kitagawa on guest properties in metal−organic frameworks (MOFs)/porous coordination polymers (PCPs). He was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Steve Granick at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, focusing on the self-assembly of MOF colloids. He joined Kyushu University in 2012 as an Assistant Professor and promoted to an Associate Professor in 2015. He has been a JST-PRESTO researcher in the “Molecular Technology and Creation of New Functions” program (2014-2018) and the “Creation of Life Science Basis by Using Quantum Technology ” program (2018-2021). He is passionate about developing new concepts in materials science and technology based on the formation, control, and stabilization of excited triplet state in condensed molecular systems. His group′s research focuses on the functional chemistry of triplet state including photon upconversion and triplet dynamic nuclear polarization. In recognition of his group′s research, he has received several awards including the Wiley Young Researcher Award and the Award for Young Chemists from Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ).