Tentative schedule -

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded researchers at the University of Chicago $12.5 million to advance work aimed at finding innovative solutions for long-lasting hydrogen energy research — potentially offering a zero-emission alternative to fossil fuels.

“Meeting the Biden-Harris Administration’s ambitious climate and clean energy goals will require a game-changing commitment to clean energy — and that begins with researchers across the country,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The research projects announced today will strengthen the scientific foundations needed for the United States to maintain world leadership in clean energy innovation, from renewable power to carbon management.”

The Catalyst Design for Decarbonization Center, or CD4DC, will be the first center of its kind based at the University of Chicago and will be led by Laura Gagliardi, the Richard and Kathy Leventhal Professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, the Department of Chemistry, and the James Franck Institute. Gagliardi also is the director of the Chicago Center for Theoretical Chemistry. Six other UChicago investigators will join Gagliardi — John Anderson, Chibueze Amanchukwu, Andrew Ferguson, Ian Foster, Juan de Pablo, and Anna Wuttig.

Recycling water is one way to unlock more freshwater – but what if we could just absorb water out of the air? That’s the goal of a new water extraction device developed with the help of Laura Gagliardi, Richard and Kathy Leventhal Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering.

A theoretical chemist at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Gagliardi is an expert in modeling chemical phenomena with complex computer simulations. For many years, she has worked with collaborators around the world to study metal-organic frameworks or MOFs – materials whose molecular structure gives them a porous internal surface area. That internal surface that can be functionalized to absorb high amounts of gas, or, in this case, collect water from the air.

“They are essentially sponges,” Gagliardi said. “But we needed to understand exactly how they work at the atomic level to make such a device work even better.”

As more drivers adopt plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles, the demand for lithium-ion batteries will continue to explode over the next decade.

But processes for extracting lithium can be time-consuming and chemical-intensive, and traditional sources—including brine and hard rock—could ultimately be depleted.

Scientists and engineers are now looking to unconventional water sources, including oil- and gas-produced water, geothermal brines, and rejected brines from seawater desalination. But how much lithium lies within these sources, and how to best extract it, remains an open question.

Asst. Prof. Chong Liu’s team now has the answer. By analyzing more than 122,000 unconventional water sources, she and her team discovered that there is, in fact, enough lithium within these sources to make it worthwhile to extract.

They also found that the composition of these sources—the amount of sodium, magnesium, potassium, and calcium—can affect extraction performance of an emerging technology, providing key insights for refining and optimizing it. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It’s a brainy Band-Aid, a smart watch without the watch, and a leap forward for wearable health technologies. Researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have developed a flexible, stretchable computing chip that processes information by mimicking the human brain. The device, described in the journal Matter, aims to change the way health data is processed.

“With this work we’ve bridged wearable technology with artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a powerful device which can analyze health data right on our own bodies,” said Sihong Wang, a materials scientist and Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering.

Today, getting an in-depth profile about your health requires a visit to a hospital or clinic. In the future, Wang said, people’s health could be tracked continuously by wearable electronics that can detect disease even before symptoms appear. Unobtrusive, wearable computing devices are one step toward making this vision a reality.

Manipulating solid particles of a few micrometers in size using an electric field has been of great interest to physicists. These controllable particles can be assembled into dynamic chains that can effectively control the flow of liquids in thin tubes like capillaries. Replacing these solid particles with liquid droplets would allow for previously unachievable electrorheology applications in biotechnology, as liquid droplets can store and utilize various biomolecules such as enzymes. Until now, it was not possible to use liquid droplets for electrorheology, as they tend to coalesce or deform, rendering them ineffective as electrorheological fluids.

New research done in collaboration between the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has shown a simple pathway for stabilizing polyelectrolyte coacervate droplets that do not coalesce or deform under an electric field. The study was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Meng used x-ray, neutron, and electron beams to study batteries either after failure or under extreme operation conditions and conducted quantitative analyses of how they operated and degraded. When she found that the cathode materials in batteries often degrade at their surface 1-10nm, she proposed strategies to protect the surfaces, including both new coatings and new electrolyte development — the electron microscopy tools she mastered was proven to be useful to evaluate the effectiveness of those strategies.

That materials work led to the development of a new class of electrolyte materials called liquified gas electrolytes that allows batteries to work at temperatures as cold as -80 degrees Celsius. This type of battery could lead to better batteries for aviation, space exploration, and even for severely cold climates on Earth.

Undergraduate students from across the country gathered at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering this summer for ten weeks of hands-on research into sustainable technology, materials science, immunoengineering, and quantum engineering.

The Undergraduate Research Experience (REU) program, funded by the National Science Foundation, provides undergraduate students attending non-research colleges and universities the opportunity to gain authentic lab experience. The program was held in person for the first time this year.

Andrew Ferguson, REU director and associate professor of molecular engineering, spoke about the 2022 cohort and their work.

“We are delighted to have such a fantastic group this year,” Ferguson said. “The students have worked on a variety of exciting projects ranging from the separation of lithium ions from seawater to high-throughput screening of novel molecules for environmental remediation to in vitro design of new T-cell therapies, and it was wonderful to see the novel research that these incredible students achieved in such a short period of time.”

For future optical technologies, blue phase liquid crystals offer tantalizing possibilities.

Because these crystals selectively reflect visible light, they could form the basis of new types of electronic displays or innovative camouflaging technologies. And because they respond to stimuli by changing color, blue phase crystals could be used as extremely sensitive colorimetric sensors for volatile organic compounds.

But to integrate these crystals into technology, scientists must make single crystals that are temperature stable. That has proven difficult, since blue phase crystals only exist in a small temperature range: in some cases, heating them up even 1 degree can destroy their properties.

In a new paper, a team from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago has developed a method to create blue phase single crystals that is applicable irrespective of the chemistry and complexity of the liquid crystal-forming material. They also developed a method of turning the liquid crystals into a gel, making them thermally stable. The results were published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Renewed Energy Frontier Research Center to continue providing pivotal discoveries related to advanced materials underpinning future solutions to water crises.

Water-energy systems are at the heart of electricity production, water treatment and distribution, irrigation of energy crops such as maize, oil and gas operations and more. One of the biggest impediments to improving such systems is the complicated science at the interface between water and solid surfaces in these systems.

For the past four years, the Advanced Materials for Energy-Water Systems (AMEWS) Center, led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has been making pivotal discoveries centered on this important interface.

Today, DOE announced its decision to renew AMEWS for another four years. For the renewal period, Argonne will continue its earlier partnership with the University of Chicago and Northwestern University and will add a valuable new partner, Princeton University. Planned funding is $13 million over the next four years.

Batteries have revolutionized our lives, especially the invention of rechargeable batteries, which have enabled us to have cellphones, laptops, and electric vehicles. But as we transition to more forms of green energy, we're facing a serious dilemma: Will our current lithium-ion batteries be able to sustain us?

Battery scientist Shirley Meng says we need to explore different metals and elements that could last longer and charge faster. Meng is a chief scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory and a professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. For the past two decades, she has been pioneering research on new energy storage materials — ones that are affordable, can be mined ethically, and most importantly, ones that can be recycled efficiently.

The immune system is a complex network of signals among cells that can quickly relay information about the location and severity of foreign invaders.

But just how far these signals travel, and what receiving cells can decode from them, has remained a mystery—one that researchers in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago wanted to solve.

Using simulations and cell culture experiments conducted on a microfluidic device, researchers within the lab of Prof. Savas Tay found that when pathogen signals propagate among cell populations, nearby cells secrete signaling molecules in waves, giving other cells information about the dose, duration, and distance to the pathogen. The distance the signals travel depends on the initial dose.

The results, published in Science Advances, could lead to a better understanding of our immune system and ultimately lead to more effective therapies to treat disease.

PME ImmunoEngineering Laboratories

Quantum Engineering News

From water boiling into steam to ice cubes melting in a glass, we’ve all seen the phenomenon known as a phase transition in our everyday lives. But there’s another type of phase transition that’s much harder to see, but just as stark: quantum phase transitions.

When cooled to near absolute zero, certain materials can undergo these quantum phase transitions, which can make a physicist’s jaw drop. The material can flip from being magnetic to non-magnetic, or it can suddenly acquire the superpower to conduct electricity with zero energy lost as heat.

The mathematics behind these transitions is tough to handle even for supercomputers—but a new study from the University of Chicago suggests a new way to work with these complicated calculations, which could eventually yield technological breakthroughs. The shortcut pulls only the most important information into the equation, and creates a “map” of all possible phase transitions in the system being simulated.

Drawing from cutting-edge laboratory research, memQ develops semiconductor materials with novel qubit storage capabilities that will play a critical role in quantum network development.

The team has deep ties to the Chicago quantum scene: spearheaded by recent Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) graduate Manish Kumar Singh, PhD’22, memQ draws from the collective expertise of Argonne National Laboratory researcher Sean Sullivan and Professor Supratik Guha.

Advised by Guha, Singh was among the first students in the country to receive a doctoral degree in quantum engineering, which emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to quantum problem-solving that pulls together skills from chemical and materials engineering, applied physics, and nanofabrication. Now, the team is leveraging that collaborative mindset to drive commercial innovation.

Using Singh’s doctoral research as a starting point, memQ is producing semiconductor materials. The theory behind quantum memory has been studied by the physics community for years, but scalable, on-chip implementation of the technology has yet to be realized.

For many researchers, the inception of their scientific career can be traced back to singular pique of curiosity—a surprising observation, an unusual encounter, an unignorable question. For Chuting Deng, the path to materials engineering began with food.

Deeply inquisitive as a child, Deng remembers being transfixed by the seemingly commonplace transformation of raw ingredients into food; how a little heat could turn freshly cracked eggs into a hearty breakfast. That simple chemical reaction led Deng to study materials science, an interdisciplinary field that leverages those same types of reactions—albeit more complex—to help solve many of today’s pressing issues across healthcare, sustainability, and water security.

Deng is now a 5th-year PhD student at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, where she’s working on advanced materials such as better lithium-ion batteries and molecules that can capture phosphate from contaminated water. This summer, she’s bringing her expertise to molecular simulations and material informatics as a 3M data science intern.

As industries across the country begin the transition to renewable energy, the demand for batteries, and therefore lithium, is projected to rise dramatically. But, with much of the global lithium supply located outside of the United States, researchers are looking for new techniques to extract it from local, if somewhat unconventional, sources such as petroleum wastewater and geothermal brines.

One of the most promising of these extraction techniques is electrochemical intercalation, a process in which electrodes draw lithium from otherwise unusable water. Until recently, the technology had not reached the desired level of Li selectivity for extremely dilute water resources.

Now, researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have shown that “seeding” electrodes with lithium ions can help increase the host’s lithium selectivity and repel unwanted elements. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded four researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) a collective $2.5 million to investigate key barriers to next-generation energy storage and carbon reduction technologies. The award is part of the DOE’s Chemical and Materials Sciences to Advance Clean Energy Technologies and Low-Carbon Manufacturing funding opportunity.

Chong Liu, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor at Pritzker Molecular Engineering, will receive $1.5 million over three years for her multi-PI project titled “Electric field driven precision material synthesis.” The research, a collaborative effort involving Prof. Shirley Meng and Asst. Prof. Shuolong Yang of Pritzker Molecular Engineering, will investigate a new method control defect formation on ultrathin films, which have the potential to unlock new membrane materials for energy devices, including batteries, fuel cells, and electrolyzers.

Chibueze Amanchukwu, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering, will receive $1.05 million to investigate dual-ion batteries. Such batteries are considered a promising candidate for long-duration grid storage because they are made from abundant raw materials and have high energy densities. Amanchukwu and his lab will work to understand the current shortcomings of dual-ion batteries, focusing on novel electrolyte design and mechanistic insights.

Chemical research is critically important to the U.S. economy, and maintaining U.S. leadership in this sector will require continued and sustained support, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. This support should include federal agency funding for chemical research projects, private investment in research and development at universities, and efforts to attract international research talent to the U.S.

The new report looks ahead to emerging areas and needs in the chemical sciences and provides recommendations for future research, developing the chemical research workforce, and funding mechanisms to drive innovation. The report emphasizes the key role the chemical economy will play in addressing sustainability issues, highlighting opportunities such as carbon capture and recyclability.

Scientists are developing vaccines to target the virus family that spawned Covid-19. Their efforts could thwart future variants, or even new related viruses.

Scientists are also exploring other nano-based methods for variant-proof vaccination. One of these, called a “nanotrap,” was originally described in Matter in June 2021 as a treatment for those who have already been infected rather than as a vaccine. A nanotrap is a mechanism to get rid of Covid viruses through phagocytosis, meaning that a macrophage or other immune cell eats it. Nanotraps work a little like bait—they essentially trick the body into chomping up the invading virus.

The idea could work on a variety of viruses, but bioengineer Jun Huang from the University of Chicago and his team created one that is specific to sarbecoviruses because it has a polymeric nanoparticle shell studded with ACE2 receptors, which are the receptors on human cells that the Covid virus binds to. Because of the high density of ACE2 receptors on the nanotrap’s surface, Covid viruses are attracted to it and get stuck. But here’s where the trap comes in: Sprinkled amid the ACE2 receptors are ligands, little molecules that can bind to a cell receptor and, in this case, induce phagocytosis. The body’s macrophages recognize the ligand and eat up the rest of the virus-flecked nanotrap, thus getting rid of the virus. “We first catch the virus, and then clear the virus,” Huang says.

Exposure to a synthetic chemical found widely in the environment is linked to non-viral hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of liver cancer, according to a new study conducted by researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC and published in JHEP Reports.

The chemical, called perfluooctane sulfate or PFOS, is one of a class of man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. These chemicals, which are used in a wide range of consumer and industrial products, are sometimes called forever chemicals because they break down very slowly and accumulate in the environment and human tissue, including the liver.

The controversial class of highly fluorinated chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are persistent and potentially toxic, has essentially become a new part of the Earth’s ecosystem. There are estimated to be around 8000 different types of PFAS out there – found in the atmosphere, rain, surface water, groundwater and even people – but technological developments now offer to break this cycle.

PFAS have a carbon backbone with multiple carbon–fluorine bonds that are exceptionally strong, making them extremely persistent. These compounds can take as long as hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years to break down¹, leading to them being dubbed ‘forever chemicals’ in the media.

AI hype has researchers in fields from medicine to sociology rushing to use techniques that they don’t always understand—causing a wave of spurious results.

History shows civil wars to be among the messiest, most horrifying of human affairs. So Princeton professor Arvind Narayanan and his PhD student Sayash Kapoor got suspicious last year when they discovered a strand of political science research claiming to predict when a civil war will break out with more than 90 percent accuracy, thanks to artificial intelligence.

A series of papers described astonishing results from using machine learning, the technique beloved by tech giants that underpins modern AI. Applying it to data such as a country’s gross domestic product and unemployment rate was said to beat more conventional statistical methods at predicting the outbreak of civil war by almost 20 percentage points.

Yet when the Princeton researchers looked more closely, many of the results turned out to be a mirage. Machine learning involves feeding an algorithm data from the past that tunes it to operate on future, unseen data. But in several papers, researchers failed to properly separate the pools of data used to train and test their code’s performance, a mistake termed “data leakage” that results in a system being tested with data it has seen before, like a student taking a test after being provided the answers.

Plastic waste makes up an estimated 80% of marine pollution. About 10 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the ocean each year. Plastic production increased more than 200-fold between 1950 and 2019, growing from 2 million tonnes to 460 million tonnes per year.

More than 1,000 rivers account for 80% of global marine plastic waste. Small urban rivers are among the most polluting.

Only 14–18% of plastic is recycled globally.

Four everyday plastic items make up 44% of marine litter:

-Bags: 14%

-Bottles: 12%

-Food containers and cutlery: 9%

-Wrappers: 9%

75% of people want a ban on single-use plastic.

By applying existing solutions and technologies we can….

-Cut annual flows of plastic into the ocean by about 80% in the next 20 years

-Save US$70bn for governments over 20 years relative to business-as-usual

-Create 700,000 jobs by 2040 relative to business-as-usual

-Reduce annual global greenhouse-gas emissions by 25% by 2040

Escalating water stress is not yet matched by an increase in political awareness or investment. Forums such as COP, digital technologies and alternative sources of water could be the key to worldwide

Water scarcity and insecurity is the lack of access to safe, reliable water sources for everyday necessities like drinking, cooking, cleaning, sanitation and more. They are long-term challenges that will only worsen as the impacts of climate change continue to spiral and populations rise. A 2020 study estimated that 4 billion people already experience water scarcity for at least one month a year.

This number could double by 2050 if the world fails to meet the Paris agreement’s target of limiting warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and if future population growth is high, according to the same study. Even if the target is met, and population growth is low, water stress could still rise by 50% by 2050 compared with 2010 levels, the research says. Yet progress on water-scarcity targets under the UN Sustainable Development Goals is off track.

When it comes to the Paris agreement on climate change, the topic of water scarcity and insecurity does not get much attention, says Claire O’Neill, senior adviser at international investment firm Hambro Perks and former UK minister for energy and clean growth. “Three [or more] billion people in water stress is a huge compelling issue, but there is no conversation,” she says.

Aquanomics uses a bespoke model to estimate the future economic impact of water risk from droughts, floods and storms in 10 geographies at both a GDP and sector level. The numbers are staggering - $5.6 trillion could be lost between 2022 and 2050.

Communities across the world are already feeling the impact of increasing climatic events and it is crucial that we act now to protect them.

The water sector has the opportunity to lead change. More directed investment, focused innovation, and integrated water management is needed, and bringing communities along on this journey is key. Recognising the role of water as a connector between sectors – central to the development of a circular economy and a critical element of every business and supply chain – will also be part of the solution.

We need to reorient our relationship with water. It’s time to move away from viewing it as a commodity to be controlled, instead recognising its intrinsic value; water is part of a natural cycle, the balance of which must be restored and maintained if we are to live sustainably and prosperously.

Have you ever wondered just how much water plants need to grow, or indeed why they need it? Plants lose a lot of water when they take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so they need up to 300 grams of water to make each gram of dry plant matter.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In a new paper published in Nature Plants, we report on a natural secret that could ultimately be used to help plants thrive while using less water.

Plants are mostly made up of water – about 80% by weight. So we might expect plants would need around four grams of water for each gram of dry mass to achieve their ideal level of hydration.

That may be so, but they need a lot more water to grow. To produce one gram of new dry mass, a plant needs about 300 grams of water.

Why such a large difference between the amount of water required for hydration and the amount required for growth? Because almost all the water plants take up from the soil through their roots soon rises out into the atmosphere through their leaves.

Breakthrough innovation introduces novel paradigms and platforms, and it creates new product families and economic opportunities. But it’s never a solo act. Even the largest companies need partners.

Innovation partnerships offer many advantages. They offset R&D costs, add expertise and flexibility, and help create new markets. They can also accelerate innovation and commercialization timelines — a vitally important function, given that achieving and commercializing breakthroughs can otherwise take decades. That’s why 94% of tech industry executives consider innovation partnerships a necessary strategy.

The problem is, the majority of these collaborations fail, especially when it comes to actually making breakthroughs.

Why? There are all sorts of reasons. Companies choose partners who aren’t a good fit. They set misguided goals. They fail to communicate effectively or fail to deliver per product requirements. They resist sharing vital confidential information for fear of leaking IP. They are change-resistant or can’t navigate unanticipated circumstances. The fact is, innovation is complex and risky, and collaboration can make it riskier.

Researching how cancers grow and spread has conventionally been done on two-dimensional, flat cultures of cells, which is very different to the three-dimensional structure of cells in the body. 3D cell cultures that incorporate tissue material have been developed, but the methods to measure how cancer cells use force to spread have been lacking.

Now, researchers have developed a new method for 3D culture to accurately quantify how cancer cells generate forces to spread within tissue. "We have applied the method for investigation of early progression of breast cancer," says Juho Pokki, a principal investigator at Aalto University who led the research.

This study, a collaboration between scientists at Aalto University and Stanford University, was published in the journal Nano Letters.

Knowing exact melting temperatures is critical for building any high-performance material. The building and safety of bridges, gas turbines, jet engines and heat shields on aircraft are dependent on knowing the performance limits of materials. Materials are often synthesized or processed employing the molten or liquid state, so knowing melting is critical to making new materials.

Shift to the field of Earth and planetary science, and the melting points are used to reveal clues into Earth's past and the characteristics of planets in our solar system and far-out orbiting exoplanets.

But measuring the melting temperature of a compound or material is an arduous task. That's why, of the estimated 200,000-plus inorganic compounds, less than 10% of their melting temperatures are known.