May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
We’re celebrating the “diversity of cultures, breadth of achievement, and remarkable contributions of these communities” (whitehouse.gov) throughout the month of May with scientist spotlights on the outstanding research and accomplishments of some of our AA and NHPI awardees from the Beckman Young Investigator, Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Beckman Scholars Programs:
2020 BYI Yue Jessica Wang, PhD is an Assistant Professor at UC Merced. Wang recently published “Macromolecular Structures for Electronics, Optoelectronics, and Energy Storage” in Macromolecular Rapid Communication.
2018 BYI Xiaoji Xu, PhD is an Associate Professor at Lehigh University. Xu recently published "Atomic Force Microscopy-Based Time-Domain Two-dimensional Infrared Nanospectroscopy" in Nature Nanotechnology.
2021 BYI Yingjie Zhang, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Zhang recently received the 2024 NSF Career Award and published “Precise Surface Profiling at the Nanoscale Enabled by Deep Learning” in Nano Letters (journal cover).
2023 AOB Postdoc Suman Gunasekaran, PhD is a KIC Experimental Fellow (Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science). Gunasekaran recently published an article in Chemical Physics Reviews: “Embrace the darkness: An experimental perspective on organic exciton–polaritons.”
2017 AOB Postdoc and 2022 BYI Dianne Xiao, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. Xiao recently received the 2024 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award and published “Geometry-dependent valence tautomerism, magnetism, and electrical conductivity in 1D iron–tetraoxolene chains” in Chemical Science.
2021 AOB Postdoc Lilia Xie, PhD is a Berkeley Lab affiliate at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) and postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley. Xie recently published “Bridging Structure, Magnetism, and Disorder in Iron-Intercalated Niobium Diselenide, FexNbSe2, below x = 0.25“ in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
2023 Beckman Scholar Derek Chien is an undergraduate research student at the University of Rochester. Under the mentorship of Dr. Ignacio Franco, Chien is working on “Computational Studies of Self-Assembly in Biomimetic Materials.”
2023 Beckman Scholar Amanda Nguyen is an undergraduate research student at UCLA. Under the mentorship of Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, Nguyen is “Isolating the Dopant Counterion Size Effect on the Carrier Mobility of P3HT Films.”
