Principal Investigator

Principal Investigator

 

Prof. Qian Chen

Professor

Ph.D. Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

(217) 300-1137
qchen20_AT_illinois.edu

 

Prof. Qian Chen is currently a full professor and Racheff Scholar in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She obtained her PhD degree from the same department with Prof. Steve Granick (2012) and completed her postdoctoral research with Prof. Paul Alivisatos at the University of California, Berkeley, under the prestigious Miller Fellowship. She joined MatSE at UIUC as an assistant professor in 2015. She was promoted to Associate Professor with Racheff Scholarship in 2021 and to Full Professor in 2024.

Prof. Chen's major recognitions include the ACS Victor LaMer award (2015), the Forbes 30 under 30 Science List (2016), the AFOSR YIP (2017), the NSF CAREER award (2018), the Sloan Research Fellow in Chemistry (2018), the ACS Unilever Award (2018), the Hanwha-TotalEnergies IUPAC Young Scientist Award (2022), the Soft Matter Lectureship (2023), the Provost's Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring (2024), and the MRS Outstanding Early-Career Investigator Award (2024). She serves as the co-chair of the 2025 MRS meeting in Seattle.