2020 Materials Research Society (MRS) Mid-Career Researcher Award

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Professor Xiangfeng Duan is the sole recipient of this year’s Mid-Career Researcher Award from the MRS, the largest materials society in the US. 

The distinction is given midway in a researcher’s career for exceptional achievements in materials research and for notable leadership in the field. Duan will receive the award this April at the 2020 MRS Spring Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.

Duan is the first UC researcher to win this award, which has been presented annually for the last eight years. Previous winners have been associated with Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and other universities.

Duan received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from University of Science and Technology and China (USTC) in 1997, master’s degree in chemistry and Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from Harvard University in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He was a Founding Scientist, Principal Scientist and Manager of Advanced Technology at Nanosys Inc. from 2002 to 2008. Duan joined the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry faculty in 2008.

Duan is an Associate Editor for the journal Nano Research and has over 300 published articles and over 40 U.S. patents. He has pioneered unconventional material integration approaches to functional heterostructures for electronic and energy devices. His recent forward-looking perspective on “van der Waals integration before and beyond two-dimensional materials” was featured in Nature’s 150th anniversary special collection.  

Duan’s awards and honors include 2018 Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2018 Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry, and 2017, 2018, 2019 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science.

Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.