Yayuan Liu, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, received an award and a grant to support her research in the field of converting harmful emissions into renewable energy through electrochemical means.
Her National Science Foundation’s Early CAREER Award for a project titled “Electrochemically Mediated Carbon Dioxide Separation via Non-Aqueous Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer” will allow her to explore a new concept for carbon capture modulated by electrochemical stimuli. The project’s goal is to understand and ultimately control the thermodynamics, reaction kinetics, and transport properties of the model electrochemical system, utilizing a multi-modal toolkit of materials synthesis, characterization, and electroanalysis. Early CAREER Awards recognize early-stage scholars with high levels of promise and excellence.
Liu is also part of a team that received a grant from Research Corporation for Science Advancement, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and ClimateWorks Foundation in the third year of the Scialog: Negative Emissions Science initiative. The grant supports the work of early career scientists aiming to catalyze advances that will enable technologies for removal of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to become more efficient, affordable, and scalable. The team’s project is titled “Surface Charge-induced CO2 Solvent Regeneration Via Free Volume Manipulation.”