Faculty Updates

T. Don Tilley named inaugural PMP Tech Chancellor’s Chair in Chemistry

We are very grateful to Rubber and Joy Chen for their gift of $3.6M to establish the PMP Tech Chancellor’s Chair in Chemistry.

The Chen’s gift of $3M allows the College to take advantage of a special University match. Combined with these matching funds, their generous gift creates a permanent assistant professor position in the College of Chemistry, and a Chair to be awarded to a tenured professor. $600K will be used to assist with the lab start-up costs for the new assistant professor. Recruitment for the new faculty member is underway.

Thanks to a generous donation from Rubber and Joy Chen of PMP Tech, an international company based in Taiwan, chemistry professor and Senior Scientist at Berkeley Lab, T. Don Tilley has been announced as the inaugural PMP Tech Chancellor’s Chair in Chemistry PMP Tech was founded in 1978 in Taiwan. With an extensive international clientele, the company focuses on product lines that include: Functional elastomers (silicone/rubber); dissimilar material bonding (silicone rubber bonded with metal, plastic, textile, glass etc.); silicone rubbers with precise dimension; medical grade products and other products. Professor Tilley’s group focuses on discovery of new chemical processes and materials designed to impact technologies in energy and sustainability. These efforts include aspects of inorganic, organometallic, silicon, and materials chemistry, with emphasis on exploratory syntheses and transition metal-based catalysis. Projects in his group have produced soft materials such as silicon-based polymers and nanocarbon assemblies, and hybrid organic-inorganic materials that exhibit high selectivities as heterogeneous catalysts. Research on the conversion of solar energy to chemical fuels has led to an understanding of the key water-splitting reaction at metal-oxygen clusters. Progress in all these areas is supported by fundamental investigations into mechanism, structure and bonding. Professor Tilley said of the appointment, “I am very honored to be recognized with this chaired position and am grateful to PMP Tech for their interest in promoting soft materials research at Berkeley. This Chair is a tribute to the students and postdocs in my research group who have made fundamental contributions to advance silicon and organic materials chemistry.”

Ashok Ajoy joins the Department of Chemistry

The Department of Chemistry welcomed Assistant Professor of Chemistry Ashok Ajoy to the College of Chemistry this summer. Ashok most recently held a postdoctoral appointment in the lab of Alex Pines, The Glenn T. Seaborg Professor Emeritus. Ajoy’s research currently looks at the interface between NMR spectroscopy and quantum science. During his postdoctoral research, he headed up an international team of scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley who discovered a way to exploit defects in nanoscale and microscale diamonds to strongly enhance the sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) systems while eliminating the need for their costly and bulky superconducting magnets. Ashok said of the study, “This has been a longstanding unsolved problem in our field, and we were able to find a way to overcome it and to show that the solution is very simple.” Ashok received his Ph.D. from MIT in nuclear science and engineering with advisor Paola Cappellaro. His thesis was entitled: “Quantum assisted sensing, simulation, and control”. Read about Ashok’s research interests and background at chemistry.berkeley.edu/ajoy

Anne Baranger named inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The College’s Dean Douglas Clark has announced that Anne Baranger, Teaching Professor in the Department of Chemistry, will serve as the College’s first Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) for a three-year term. Dean Clark states, “We welcome Anne as our new associate dean. She will be responsible for the development of the College’s strategic plan for diversity, equity, and inclusion and for promoting these ideals among the faculty, staff, and students. I am confident that she will help cultivate a more inclusive and welcoming environment for all and address some of the current barriers to progress for greater diversity at our College.” The College serves a large population of undergraduate and graduate students and is a national and international leader in research. An overall educational goal is to increase the numbers of students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and improve the scientific knowledge of both STEM students and students who do not ultimately choose to major in a STEM area. Anne comments, “I am looking forward to working with the building blocks of diversity, equity, and inclusion that have already been created at the College and developing partnerships that include students, faculty, and staff. Together we can advance the work that has been done so far.” Learn more about Professor Baranger’s background and initial plans for the program at: chemistry.berkeley.edu/dei

Peidong Yang awarded 2020 Global Energy Prize

Peidong Yang, the S.K. and Angela Chan Distinguished Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry, has been recognized as a 2020 Global Energy Prize Laureate for his pioneering invention of nanoparticle based solar cell and artificial photosynthesis. The Global Energy Prize honors outstanding achievements in energy research and technology from around the world that are helping address the world’s pressing energy challenges. This year, Professor Yang was acknowledged along with Nobel Laureate Carlo Rubbia of Italy and Nikolaos Hatziargyriou of Greece. The Global Energy Association that awards the prize, was established by a group of Russian energy companies in 2002. The Association’s goals are to identify and support the best international researchers in the field of energy; encourage worldwide discoveries in the field of energy; popularize energy research; and encourage international cooperation in energy development. Professor Yang is interested in the synthesis of new classes of materials and nanostructures, with an emphasis on developing new synthetic approaches. He is also driven to understand the fundamental issues of structural assembly and growth that will enable the rational control of material composition, micro/ nano-structure, property and functionality. Specifically, these include the fundamental problems of electron, photon and phonon confinement within one-dimensional nanostructures, and their implications in energy conversion processes. Professor Yang’s current research directions include nanowirebased thermoelectrics for waste heat recovery; nanowire photonics; nanowire based photovoltaics; and nanowire-based concepts for direct solar to fuel conversion and novel CO2 reduction catalysis. Congratulations to Professor Yang for this important acknowledgement of his energy research.