The Materials Research Society (MRS) has named Hongjie Dai, professor of chemistry at Stanford University, to receive the Mid-Career Researcher Award “for seminal contributions to carbon-based nanoscience and applications in nanoelectronics, renewable energy, and biological systems.” Dai will be recognized during the Award Ceremony at the 2016 MRS Spring Meeting in Phoenix, Ariz. The Mid-Career Research Award, endowed by Aldrich Materials Science, recognizes exceptional achievements in materials research made by mid-career researchers.
Dai pioneered the controlled growth of carbon nanotubes using metal-catalyzed chemical vapor deposition. This work showed for the first time that high-quality single-walled nanotubes could be synthesized using a method that enables control over the growth process. In addition, he used his knowledge of nanotube growth to demonstrate hierarchical organization over multiple length scales. Dai also exploited this unique control over nanotube growth to uncover basic electronic properties of metallic and semiconducting nanotubes.
Over the past several years, Dai and his group have defined the fundamental limits of nanotube transistors and, in doing so, have raised the level of awareness of nanomaterials to some of the largest semiconductor companies. He also pioneered the use of nanotubes as intracellular molecular transporters for biological molecules and cancer drugs, demonstrating that key spectroscopic properties unique to nanotubes and other carbon nanostructures make them ideal for biological detection, imaging, drug delivery, and cancer therapy via in vivo photothermal tumor destruction.
His use of single-walled carbon nanotubes as fluorophores to image mouse hind limb vasculatures in the second near-infrared region (NIR-II) is a feat unattainable by traditional NIR imaging or micro-CT. With the NIR-II’s capacity of video-rate imaging with dynamic contrast and ability to quantitate blood flow in both normal and ischemic vessels, Dai has demonstrated the potential of NIR-II imaging for a wide range of biological structures and real-time processes, such as blood flow, vessel clotting, and angiogenesis.
Dai is the J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. He earned his PhD degree in applied physics/physical chemistry from Harvard University in 1994. He is the Honorary Chair Professor of the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (2015), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and serves on the editorial boards of eight publications. Dai has written more than 250 papers, and he is ranked as one of the most cited chemists (in materials chemistry) by Thomson Reuters.
