Grace Han (left) and her group.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has announced the winners of the 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships. These fellowships are awarded to early-career scientists that represent the most promising researchers working today. Winners receive $75,000, which can be used to support their research over a two-year term. Grace Han, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and the Landsman Career Development Chair in the Sciences is one of the 2022 recipients.
The major goal of Dr. Grace Han’s research program is to develop functional organic material systems that exhibit phase transitions triggered by external stimuli, notably light. The photo-controlled phase-change materials have a game-changing potential in waste heat recycling and storage, photo-actuation, photo-lithography, and photo-regulated adhesion. In particular, the novel strategy to optically ‘fix’ a liquid phase under fluctuating temperatures allows for a long-term latent heat storage and a triggered release of energy, which is not attainable by conventional phase-change materials such as paraffins or salt hydrates. To achieve this goal, her team investigates the photo-induced structural and polarity changes of molecular switches based on azobenzene, which reversibly controls the phase of materials.
The Sloan Research Fellowship will support the new direction of Han group’s research in expanding the materials set by the rational design of photoswitches with enhanced optical and thermal properties, which will address the challenges of the current state-of-the-art switches.
Two Brandeis alumni also received 2022 fellowships: Netta Engelhardt, BS ’11 (Physics) and Dapeng Bi, PhD ’12 (Physics).
