Younan Xia, the Brock Family Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine at Georgia Institute of Technology, has been selected for the Fred Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Nanoscience. He will give a presentation at the 2013 Materials Research Society Spring Meeting on April 1 in San Francisco. The title of his talk is “Colloidal metal nanocrystals—Shape control, symmetry breaking and niche applications.”

Xia’s research interests include the development of new methodologies for controlling the synthesis of nanostructured materials and exploration of their applications in biomedical research and catalysis. He received his BS degree in chemical physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1987, and a PhD degree in physical chemistry from Harvard University in 1996.

Among Xia’s numerous awards and honors are the ACS National Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2013), MRS Fellow (2009), NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (2006), ACS Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award (2005), Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar (2002), David and Lucile Packard Fellow in Science and Engineering (2000), NSF CAREER Award (2000), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2000), ACS Victor K. LaMer Award (1999), and Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award (1997). He has co-authored more than 500 publications in peer-reviewed journals, with an h-index of 129. Xia has been named a Top 10 Chemist and Materials Scientist based on the number of citations per paper. He has served as an associate editor of Nano Letters since 2002.