Dr. Shaowei , an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering (BME), has been awarded a two-year, nearly $200,000 Engineering Research Initiation (ERI)  from the National Science Foundation for his project titled “ERI: Engineering Amino Acid-Anchored 2D Silicoaluminophosphates and Aluminosilicates for Advanced Adsorption and Biomedical Applications.” 

Dr. Yang’s research focuses on developing functional materials for energy and biomedical applications. With the ERI funding, he will study materials that are only a few atoms thick and are referred to as two-dimensional (2D). The large relative surface area of these materials make them amenable to attaching functional materials that can interact with their surrounding environment. Dr. Yang will attach a variety of amino acid molecules to 2D materials and perform functions like adsorbing rare earth elements to recover them from brine solutions and serving as a part of scaffold to promote cell growth.

Per the NSF, the ERI program “supports new investigators as they initiate their research programs and advance in their careers as researchers, educators, and innovators.” Dr. Yang joined 51���� in 2021 after spending 5 years at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a research scientist.