Qian Chen

For more information

• Chen research group webpage

Professional Highlights

• Prof. Qian Chen is currently an Associate Professor and Racheff faculty scholar in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She obtained her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from UIUC with Prof. Steve Granick (2012) and did her postdoc with Prof. Paul Alivisatos at UC Berkeley under the prestigious Miller Fellowship. She joined the faculty of UIUC in 2015 and since then has received awards for the research in her group such as the Victor LaMer award in ACS (2015), Forbes 30 under 30 Science List (2016), AFOSR YIP award (2017), NSF CAREER award (2018) and Sloan Research Fellow in Chemistry (2018). The research in her group focuses on the broad scheme of imaging, understanding and engineering active soft matter, including systems such as nanoparticle and colloidal self-assembly, protein aggregation, advanced battery devices, and energy-efficient water filtration.

Selected Articles in Journals

• Qian Chen, Jonathan Whitmer, Shan Jiang, Sung Chul Bae, Erik Luijten, Steve Granick, “Supracolloidal reaction kinetics of Janus spheres,” Science 331, 199-202 (2011).
• Qian Chen, Sung Chul Bae, Steve Granick, “Directed self-assembly of a colloidal kagome lattice,” Nature 469, 381-384 (2011).
• Xiaoming Mao, Qian Chen, Steve Granick, “Entropy favours open colloidal lattices,” Nature Materials 12, 217-222 (2013).
• Juyeong Kim, Matthew R. Jones, Zihao Ou, Qian Chen, “In Situ Electron Microscopy Imaging and Quantitative Structural Modulation of Nanoparticle Superlattices,” ACS Nano 10, 9801-9808 (2016).
• Binbin Luo, John W. Smith, Zihao Ou, Qian Chen, "Quantifying the self-assembly behavior of anisotropic nanoparticles using liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy," Accounts of Chemical Research 50, 1125-1133 (2017).
• Juyeong Kim, Xiaohui Song, Fei Ji, Binbin Luo, Nicole F. Ice, Qipeng Liu, Qiao Zhang, Qian Chen, "Polymorphic assembly from beveled gold triangular nanoprisms," Nano Letters 17, 3270-3275 (2017).
• Binbin Luo, John W. Smith, Zixuan Wu, Juyeong Kim, Zihao Ou, Qian Chen, "Polymerization-like co-assembly of silver nanoplates and patchy spheres," ACS Nano 11, 7626-7633 (2017).
• Juyeong Kim, Zihao Ou, Matthew R. Jones, Xiaohui Song, Qian Chen, "Imaging the polymerization of multivalent nanoparticles in solution," Nature Communications, 8, 761 (2017).
• Xiaohui Song, John W. Smith, Juyeong Kim, Nestor J. Zaluzec, Wenxiang Chen, Hyosung An, Jordan M. Dennison, David G. Cahill, Matthew A. Kulzick, and Qian Chen*, “Unraveling the morphology–function relationships of polyamide membranes using quantitative electron tomography,” ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 11 (8), 8517–8526 (2019)
• Binbin Luo, Ahyoung Kim, John W. Smith, Zihao Ou, Zixuan Wu, Juyeong Kim and Qian Chen*, “Hierarchical self-assembly of 3D lattices from polydisperse anisometric colloid,” Nature Communications, 10, 1815 (2019).
• Wenxiang Chen, Xun Zhan, Binbin Luo, Zihao Ou, Pei-Chieh Shih, Lehan Yao, Saran Pidaparthy, Arghya Patra, Hyosung An, Paul V. Braun, Ryan M. Stephens, Hong Yang, Jian-Min Zuo*, and Qian Chen*, “Effects of particle size on Mg2+ ion intercalation into λ-MnO2 cathode materials”, Nano Letters 19, 4712 (2019).
• Ahyoung Kim, Shan Zhou, Lehan Yao, Stacey Ni, Binbin Luo, Charles E Sing, and Qian Chen*, “Tip Patched Nanoprisms from Formation of Ligand Islands,” Journal of American Chemical Society 141, 11796‒11800 (2019).
• Zihao Ou,¶ Ziwei Wang,¶ Binbin Luo, Erik Luijten*, and Qian Chen*, “Kinetic pathways of crystallization at the nanoscale,” Nature Materials 19, 450 (2020)

Honors

• Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, Solid State and Materials Chemistry program, National Science Foundation (Nov, 2017)
• ACS Petroleum Research Foundation Doctoral New Researcher Award (Oct, 2017)
• Air Force's Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) Award, Biophysics Program, Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Oct, 2016)
• The SN 10 List of Scientists Making the Next Big Discoveries; Science News Magazine (one of the 10 early- and mid-career scientists, age 40 and under, selected among all science disciplines) (Sep, 2016)
• Distinguished Visiting Fellow, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng), United Kingdom (to a distinguished professor from an overseas academic centre of excellence for up to one month in UK university to build capacity and promote collaborations) (Aug, 2016)
• Forbes 30 under 30 Science List, Forbes Magazine (Jan, 2016)
• Victor LaMer Award, Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry, American Chemical Society (Jun, 2015)
• Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad, Extraordinary Prize (5 worldwide), Ministry of Education, P.R. China (2012)
• Miller Research Fellowship, Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, University of California Berkeley (Jul, 2012-May, 2015)
• Warren Yee Memorial Fellowship, College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (to the most promising overseas Chinese students) (2009)

Recent Courses Taught

• MSE 450 - Polymer Science & Engineering
• MSE 480 (CHEM 488) - Surfaces and Colloids
• MSE 559 - Soft Materials Seminar
• MSE 595 - Materials Colloquium