10/30/2026
Five Ph.D. students were awarded PPG-MRL Graduate Research Assistantships by the PPG Foundation to conduct research that is broadly related to coatings science and specialty materials. Tathagata Chatterjee, Ziyi Che, Alec Damron, Jeong Woo Koo and Jiazheng Liu will receive one year of support at 25 percent appointment and a $2,000 travel award to present their research accomplishments at a major scientific meeting.
Nanomaterials, self-healing epoxy coatings, polycatenated DNA crystals and more. These are just some of the foci for this year's cohort of the PPG-MRL Graduate Research Assistantship awards.
Five Ph.D. students were awarded fellowships by the PPG Foundation to conduct research that is broadly related to coatings science and specialty materials. Tathagata Chatterjee, Ziyi Che, Alec Damron, Jeong Woo Koo and Jiazheng Liu will receive one year of support at 25 percent appointment and a $2,000 travel award to present their research accomplishments at a major scientific meeting.
PPG and the PPG Foundation partner with the University of Illinois to support students preparing for in-demand careers that will shape global innovation and cutting-edge technologies in areas such as polymer science and engineering, chemical engineering, materials science and synthetic organic chemistry. This fellowship enables graduate students focused on organic and inorganic coatings within the Materials Research Laboratory.
Preparing the next generation of innovators is a key part of the PPG Foundation's 75-year history and ongoing commitment to education. Through partnerships with leading universities across the United States, the PPG Foundation funds scholarships, fellowships, research collaborations, mentorship opportunities and workforce development programs to help students prepare for careers in coatings and manufacturing-related fields that connect to it businesses.
"Rising global energy demand calls for new specialty materials that can efficiently harvest and convert solar energy. Plasmonic nanoparticles are promising candidates: their localized surface plasmon resonances give them large optical cross-sections, allowing them to act as nanoscale antennas that concentrate incident light. Coating these nanoparticles with an adsorbate interface which can act as an acceptor effectively extracts the energy captured in these nanoparticles. The efficiency of energy extraction depends on design principles of both plasmonic nanoparticles and the acceptor adsorbate energy levels. The goal of my research is to characterize interfacial energy transfer in hybrid nanomaterials consisting of plasmonic donors interfaced with soft polymer/molecular coatings. My expertise in correlated single-particle characterization techniques including photothermal absorption, dark-field scattering, and electron microscopy provides unique optical-structural insights to guide design principles of fabricating these structures. Critically, this correlation precisely points out the performance from one single nanoparticle rather than heterogenous effects coming from ensemble techniques. Combining all these aspects of my research goals, my research aims to offer an alternative pathway for predictive material design for high-performance solar coatings to tackle the rising energy demands."
"Tathagata is my first UIUC graduate student and in addition to his drive to excel in complex single-particle measurements has quickly become a leader in the group. His research is both meticulous as well as clever and forward-looking, challenging me all the time with new ideas and directions. "
"Metallic infrastructure degradation due to corrosion is one of the most significant global engineering and economic challenges. Traditional protective coatings fail when stress-induced microcracks trigger localized corrosion, which will propagate through the bulk structure. In the PPG-MRL Graduate Research Award, I aim to develop self-healing, microcapsule-embedded epoxy coatings that can autonomously repair microdefects and extend infrastructure service life in harsh conditions."
"Ziyi is everything you can ask for in a graduate student. She works hard, comes to my office ready to present her ideas, asks challenging questions, and is always interested in discussing new directions. Her project on self-healing and responsive materials will require her to make serious advances in microencapsulation and polymer science. The PPG fellowship will provide her the freedom to tackle the most challenging aspects of her project without needing to be concerned about obtaining immediate results.”
"I would describe my research as an attempt to bridge the gap between fundamental material physics and process engineering of organic semiconductors. Often, these challenges are treated completely separately, and thus largely ignore what actually controls the final product. In our field, for example, how the polymers assemble into diverse structures in the inks we use fall into one sect of research, and system development for coating falls into another. However, it is clear that they influence each other hugely, and in complex ways. This is why I decided to create methods to track how assembly evolves during processing by using easily measurable properties. The methods allow us to map phase-space diagrams that tell us exactly what range of processing conditions we can access certain morphologies in our printed films. This further enables us to reliably choose efficient fabrication conditions for optimal devices."
"Alec is very motivated to transform polymer thin film manufacturing into rigorous processing science. He has developed original concepts and new metrics in this domain and I am excited to pursue his proposed research supported by this prestigious award."
"Mechanically interlocked structures, like chain links, combine strength with the freedom to move and change shape in ways that neither bulk solids nor loose particles can. Their properties depend on both their ingredients and how their components are linked. Our team’s earlier work on polycatenated architected materials (PAMs) showed that three-dimensional networks of interlocked components can flow like fluids under small loads yet resist deformation like solids under larger ones.
The unresolved challenge is to bring this mechanical freedom into an ordered three-dimensional crystal at the nanoscale. Conventional DNA crystals are held together by fixed connections, while interlocked molecular chains lack long-range three-dimensional order. How mechanical interlocking governs collective ordering, thermal stability, and phase behavior under constant thermal motion remains poorly understood. My research addresses this gap by developing polycatenated DNA crystals: repeating structures of interlocked nanoscale cages that can slide and rotate while staying connected.
I build these structures using DNA origami, a technique that folds DNA into precisely designed 3D shapes. I design tripod building blocks that assemble into cages. Changing the angles between their arms produces tetrahedral or cubic cages, then I guide the cages to thread through one another as they grow into a crystal, followed by protecting the architecture with thin silica coatings.
These crystals would help us understand how interlocked components organize and rearrange without losing their connections. This understanding could lead to responsive layers that stay flexible in everyday use but stiffen under impact, or to optical surfaces that change how they interact with light when pressed, stretched, or heated. The same controlled motion could also support nanoscale robotic components and mechanical computing, where information is stored and processed through changes in physical configuration."
"Jeong Woo’s work advances our vision for a new type of soft matter: materials whose separate building blocks can rearrange while remaining inseparably linked. This gives us a new way to combine the cohesion of solids with the mobility of particles. He uses geometry-guided inverse design, working backward from a desired arrangement to design nanoscale cages that assemble into an ordered, interlocked network. Achieving this would open a previously inaccessible system for understanding how matter organizes and changes its behavior when its parts can move but cannot separate. PPG’s support helps him establish that foundation, with long-term opportunities in responsive coatings with tunable mechanical, acoustic, and optical properties."
"Water is the most familiar substance on Earth, yet how it changes phase on a surface remains surprisingly hard to predict. Textbooks describe condensation, evaporation, and freezing as separate events which occur with pure vapors or liquids. On real surfaces, these processes overlap and compete. Air mixed into the vapor slows condensation, droplets that condense on a cold surface go on to freeze into frost, and inside a single bubble, evaporation and condensation can happen at the same time. Each droplet or bubble is born at a random place and moment, yet billions of these random events add up to the reliable performance of a power plant condenser or an electronics cooling system. My research asks how that happens, and how a coating only nanometers thick can tip the balance. Using environmental chambers, high-speed imaging, and nanoscale characterization in MRL's facilities, I follow individual droplets and bubbles from birth to departure and turn what I see into theoretical models. My long-term goal is to understand surfaces where multiple phases of matter coexist and compete, and to design coatings that control phase change rather than simply endure it."
"Jiazheng has a rare ability to see and form a single scientific question which is common to multiple problems that others treat separately. He pairs careful experimentation with rigorous theory, and his work is already changing how we think about designing surfaces for phase change heat transfer. He is also a generous mentor. The undergraduates he has guided have already co-authored published works with him. Support from PPG and MRL will give him the freedom to pursue the answers to ambitious questions, and I look forward to seeing where they lead."
Stephan Link is an University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor in the Department of Chemistry within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He is affiliated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Materials Research Laboratory in The Grainger College of Engineering. He holds the Charles W. and Genevieve M. Walton Endowed Professor of Chemistry appointment.
Paul Braun is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor and head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is affiliated with the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and the Materials Research Laboratory. He holds the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering appointment.
Ying Diao is an Illinois Grainger Engineering and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences professor in the Department of Chemical and BioMolecular Engineering. She is affiliated with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the Department of Chemistry, and the Materials Research Laboratory. She is the director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Diao is a LAS Dean's Distinguished Professorial Scholar.
Wenjie Zhou is an Illinois Grainger Engineering assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Laboratory.
Nenad Miljkovic is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor and head of the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering. He is affiliated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Materials Research Laboratory. Miljkovic is the director of the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center. He holds the Founder Professor in Mechanical Science and Engineering appointment.