Graduate student Chuanzhen Zhao (P Weiss/A Andrews groups) wins Materials Research Society (MRS) Gold Graduate Student Award.
The MRS Graduate Student Award, which includes $400 and a presentation plaque, is the highest award given to graduate students of exceptional ability who show promise for significant future achievement in materials research. Zhao was selected as one of the five students to receive the Gold Award from a competitive international cohort of fifteen finalists.
Zhao presented his research on the development of implantable aptamer field-effect transistor neuroprobes, in a ten-minute presentation during the 2020 MRS Virtual Spring/Fall Meeting, to compete for the graduate student awards.
A fifth-year graduate student, Zhao works with Professors Paul S. Weiss and Anne M. Andrews in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and the Department of Psychiatry. He received his bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China in 2015, and his master’s degree in chemistry from UCLA in 2017. Zhao is expected to receive his Ph.D. in chemistry in December 2020. He recently received a Dimitris N Chorafas Foundation Award, a Dissertation Year Fellowship, and a Thomas and Ruth F. Jacobs Dissertation Award, and is first-author or co-author on 20 publications in top journals, with several more papers soon to be published.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.
