Dr. Annalise Maughan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Colorado School of Mines and holds a joint appointment with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. She received her B.S. in Chemistry and a minor in Mathematics from Northern Arizona University. She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Colorado State University under Professor James Neilson, with work focused on the materials chemistry of perovskite halide semiconductors. After completing her Ph.D. she was awarded the Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at NREL, where she worked to develop new solid-state electrolytes for all-solid-state batteries. At Colorado School of Mines, her research is focused on developing and designing solid-state materials for renewable energy, with an emphasis on understanding the design principles that connect chemistry, local and long-range structure, and dynamics to functional properties such as charge transport and light absorption/emission.

Bio

Research in the Maughan group is aimed at developing structure-dynamics-property relationships in functional solid-state materials for applications in renewable energy. Inspired by the grand challenge of “Materials by Design”, our research emphasizes crystal-chemical control through targeted synthesis of solid-state materials for a diverse range of potential applications, from renewable energy generation in perovskite halide semiconductors to safe and energy-dense energy storage technologies. Our research is highly interdisciplinary by nature, existing at the interface of chemistry, physics, and materials engineering. Students in the Maughan group are trained in solid-state and inorganic materials synthesis, X-ray and neutron scattering, and materials property measurements. Students in this program will have the opportunity to perform experiments at X-ray and neutron scattering facilities and to interface with the nearby National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Abstract

Driving Cyanide Dynamics and Ion Transport through Site Disorder in Li₆PS₅CN

Halide argyrodite solid-state electrolytes of the general formula Li₆PS₅X exhibit complex static and dynamic disorder that plays a crucial role in ion transport processes. Here, we unravel the rich interplay between site disorder and dynamics in the plastic crystal argyrodite Li₆PS₅CN and the impact on ion diffusion processes through a suite of experimental and computational methodologies, including temperature-dependent synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction, ⁷Li solid-state NMR, and machine learning-assisted ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. Sulfide and (pseudo)halide site disorder unilaterally improves long-range lithium diffusion in the argyrodite family irrespective of the (pseudo)halide identity, which demonstrates the crucial role of site disorder in dictating bulk ionic conductivity in the argyrodite family. Furthermore, we find that anion site disorder dictates the extent and timescales of cyanide rotational dynamics. Ordered configurations of anion order enable fast, quasi-free rotations of cyanides that occur on substantially faster timescales than lithium hopping as probed by solid-state NMR. In contrast, cyanide dynamics are slow or frozen in anion-disordered Li₆PS₅CN, presumably due to strong elastic dipole interactions between neighboring cyanides that impedes free rotations. Through this study, we find that anion disorder plays a decisive role in dictating the extent and timescales of both lithium and cyanide dynamics in Li₆PS₅CN and presents an exciting materials design strategy for harnessing coupled motions in complex ion transport mechanisms in the next generation of solid-state electrolytes. 

Bio

Dr. Randall J. Meyer obtained his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in 2001, under the joint supervision of Prof. David Allen and Prof. Buddie Mullins working on the adsorption of chlorinated hydrocarbons on single crystal Iridium surfaces.

After graduation, Randall was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt post-doctoral fellowship to continue his education at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin where he worked in the department of Chemical Physics for Prof. Hajo Freund on fundamental studies of supported Au catalysts using a variety of surface science techniques including scanning tunneling microscopy until Spring of 2004 whereupon Randall moved to the University of Virginia where he worked as a post-doctoral researcher under Prof. Matt Neurock performing Density Functional Theory calculations of Al2O3 supported silver clusters.

Randall began his career as a faculty member in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago in January of 2006. In 2011, he was promoted to the level of Associate Professor with tenure. However, in summer of 2014 Randall moved from industry to academia, joining the Catalysis Section in Corporate Strategic Research at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering facility in Annandale NJ. He has authored over 90 publications and 5 patents in which he has used a variety of techniques to study heterogeneous catalysis focusing mostly on a combination of density functional theory, kinetic modeling and X-ray absorption spectroscopy.

Abstract

Descriptor Search for Metal Oxide Reactivity and Transport

Metal oxides play a prominent role in enabling many important technologies such as heterogeneous oxidation catalysis, oxygen transport membranes, solid oxide fuels and oxygen storage materials.  In the Inorganic Crystal Structure database nearly 40,000 pristine oxide structures have been recorded. However, when dopants to the crystal lattice are considered, the number of different synthesizable metal oxide materials grows even further.  Descriptors for their reactivity and ion conductance that capture the effect of local structure are therefore highly desirable in order to focus researchers on the most appropriate set of materials for a given application.  Different classes of descriptors for oxygen ion transport have been identified which account for the geometric effects (e.g. void volume, transport window), electronic structure effects (e.g. M-O bond strength) and dynamic effects (e.g. phonon band center). Similar descriptors have previously been developed for reactivity of metal oxide surfaces. In this work, building upon the previous literature, we hope to develop multi-descriptor predictive relationships as no single descriptor can capture the complex chemistry of these materials. In addition, we attempt to build descriptors based on local structure as bulk material properties may not be reflective of the atomistic level events described here in transport and catalysis. Although we focus here primarily on oxygen ion transport, some implications and approaches for the more complicated problem of surface reactivity will be presented.

Bio

Prof. Hai-Quan Mao is Director of the Institute of NanoBioTechnology (INBT) and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Prof. Mao’s research focuses on engineering nanomaterials for regenerative medicine and for the delivery of molecular and cellular therapeutics.  His lab has developed nanofiber scaffolds from synthetic and natural biomaterials for engineering and delivery of stem cells and regeneration of soft tissues.  His lab also established nanoparticle manufacturing platforms for controlled assembly of nanotherapeutics to deliver DNA, RNA and protein therapeutics and demonstrates their efficacy in local and systemic delivery of macromolecular therapeutics and vaccines.

Prof. Mao currently serves as an Associate Editor of the journal “Biomaterials” and on the editorial boards of ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering and Journal of Materials Chemistry B.  He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed research articles and is a co-inventor of 33 issued U.S. patents and more than a dozen provisional applications.  He has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and a senior member of the National Academy of Inventors.

Abstract

New nanotechnology platforms with tailored structural and functional characteristics can advance the ways medical interventions are delivered to treat and prevent diseases and repair damaged tissues.  This seminar will cover two nanomaterials platforms based on a kinetically controlled nanoparticle assembly process and a nanofiber-hydrogel composite, and their applications in soft tissue remodeling and regeneration, as well as for delivery of gene medicine and protein therapeutics.  Scalable manufacturing processes and their translational potential as off-the-shelf therapeutic solutions will also be discussed.  

Design of bio-inspired glycopolymers for protein binding and deliveryBio

Dr. Sarah Morgan is Bennett Distinguished Professor and Associate Director of the School of Polymer Science and Engineering at The University of Southern Mississippi. She joined the university in 2003 after a 14-year career at GE Plastics in engineering thermoplastics, where she held technical and managerial positions at GE locations around the world. Morgan’s research involves bioinspired polymers for biomedical applications and nanocomposites for sustainable materials applications. She is equally passionate about polymer education and development of the next generation of scientists and engineers. Her research is funded by NSF, NIH, DoD, and industrial partners. Morgan is Science Director of the state-wide Center for Emergent Molecular Optoelectronics funded by NSF, and PI of the multi-investigator Multifunctional Materials to Address Military Engineering research collaboration with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Morgan is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and recipient of The Society of Plastics Engineers Education Award. 

Abstract

Design of bio-inspired glycopolymers for protein binding and delivery

Glycopolymers, inspired by natural polysaccharides, provide a platform for a wide range of biomedical, agricultural, and personal care applications. Our group is exploring the effects of polymer structure, saccharide stereochemistry, and composition on protein binding and delivery performance. Abnormal protein behaviors, such as aggregation or mislabeling as antigens, are involved in many difficult-to-treat disorders including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and celiac disease. Water-soluble polymers with functional motifs mimicking those in naturally occurring polymers provide an avenue to interrogate binding and assembly processes and can be designed to modify protein behavior. Synthesis of glycopolymers with stereospecific pendent groups designed to mimic natural polysaccharides will be discussed for applications such as peptide binding in Alzheimer’s disease, vehicles for RNA delivery to reduce the expression of tick proteins involved in host attachment and tick-born infection, and therapeutic encapsulation and delivery vehicles that are both biocompatible and specific. Current work in designing glycopolymers and peptides and understanding the effects of polymer structure and stereochemistry on morphology of self-assembled structures will be reported.

Bio

Elizabeth J. Stewart, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Chemical Engineering Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute with an affiliate appointment in Biomedical Engineering.  She joined WPI in 2018 after completing her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan and postdoctoral studies in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Her work focuses on establishing and exploiting the physical properties of biocolloidal and biological soft matter systems with an emphasis on bacterial infection prevention and control.  She has received funding to support her work from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense.  She also has interests in the pedagogy of interdisciplinary learning and professional development within graduate engineering education. 

Abstract

Establishing and Exploiting Biocolloidal Properties of Bacterial Biofilms

Bacterial biofilms are structured communities of cells encapsulated in matrix materials that include polysaccharides, proteins, and DNA.  Biofilms are ubiquitous in human and animal health, industrial settings, and natural environments.  Clinically, biofilms are estimated to be responsible for 65-80% of human infections annually.  In my work, bacterial biofilms are studied as a biological soft matter system where the cells are analogous to colloidal particles and the matrix materials are analogous to viscoelastic hydrogels.  This perspective allows for relationships between the biophysical properties of biofilms and their functions to be revealed. In this seminar, I use a biocolloidal lens to establish the colloidal microstructure of staphylococcal biofilms.  I demonstrate how bacterial cells, biofilm matrix materials, and their microenvironments interact to generate biofilm morphology and mechanics, and control dispersion of bacteria from biofilms. Additionally, I highlight recent work to engineer a biofilm infection-on-a-chip to study biofilm development at the vascular interface.  Findings from this work have implications in the development of antibiofilm therapeutics and novel biofilm control strategies. 

Bio

Dr. Meyer obtained her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Iowa State in 2017 and her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 2022. At Colorado School of Mines, she was awarded the CASE Fellowship in 2017 and created two student groups within the Chemical and Biological Engineering department to advocate for graduate students’ mental health and support and empower women in STEM. Her dissertation at Colorado School of Mines focused on defect engineering and mitigation in terrestrial silicon photovoltaics, with an emphasis on advanced defect characterization. Dr. Meyer has won numerous awards and accolades for her research and outreach activities including the Outstanding Thesis Award and the Rath Research Award in 2022. As a Senior Member of Technical Staff at the Aerospace Corporation she now focuses on defect engineering, identification, and mitigation in space-based photovoltaics, emphasizing in silicon and III-V photovoltaics. In her free time, Dr. Meyer likes to go running, campaign, snowboarding, hiking, and essentially any other outdoor activity.

Abstract

Silicon Photovoltaic Defect Engineering from Earth to Space

Since the discovery of the photovoltaic (PV) effect in 1839 by Edmond Becquerel, immense research efforts on PV absorber materials and devices has driven us to discover a wide variety of solar cells.  Silicon (Si) PV are the most mature, dating back to the 1950s when researchers at Bell Labs developed the first practical Si solar cell. Si PV currently dominates the terrestrial PV market at over 95% market share. Additionally, in recent years there is growing interest in developing Si PV for space application as launch costs and mission durations decrease. In both terrestrial and space-based application, Si PV devices struggle from defect formation, leading to a decrease in performance and reliability. In this talk, I will discuss my efforts in both my PhD and current position on defect engineering of Si PV to increase their resiliency both terrestrially and in space. In addition, I will discuss my transition from Colorado School of Mines to The Aerospace Corporation and outline some of the challenges and successes I found along the way.

Bio

Dr. Erickson serves as the Technical Authority and Technology Development Lead for Wood Group Intelligent Operations. At Wood he has pioneered the development of real-time, transient, multiphase flow simulators, leak detection systems, and control/optimization software for platforms/pipelines and wrote most of the core code for the multiphase pipeline simulator. In addition, he has been involved in numerous technical studies involving transient multiphase flow and dynamic process modelling. Since 1996, has had a significant role in over 100 projects, by providing functional design, detailed design approval, trouble shooting, tuning, quality review and testing and technical supervision. He first worked in the area of flow assurance by writing the first version of the Colorado School of Mines Hydrate program in 1983; then developed high accuracy equations of state in conjunction with NIST in Boulder, for things like CO2 in the Critical Region while getting his PhD from Rice University. He co-developed a thermal soil model enhancement and a bundle model enhancement for OLGA and developed the first commercial model for paraffin formation. He has recently developed a model of Oil Shale Well Operation including a simplified Reservoir Model. Finally worked on a model of the largest CO2 Storage Network.

Abstract

Operation of Complex CO2 Transportation and Storage Networks.

Several companies have estimated that the carbon capture business could be soon generating more than $4 trillion dollars of revenue per year. Many of the proposed networks will collect CO2 from a wide variety of emitters and for a given network the number of emitters may be large i.e., greater than 30. Also, the CO2 rich mixture will be transported across the country at distances more than 1000 miles to be stored in more economical/stable reservoirs. For this reason, the networks will be complex since many companies will be responsible for various aspect of the process. As a result, the operation/control will be complex, and this presentation will discuss various issues and possible solutions. CO2 in the presence of free water is very corrosive and one month’s exposure will use up the full corrosion allowance that a carbon steel pipeline will have (so the goal is to never have free water in the pipeline). Things like NOX/SOX will even make the situation worse. For this reason, there will need to be various control/monitoring strategies to keep off spec fluids contained in the emitter network and not allow these fluids into the main pipeline where this could affect the transport of the other 29 emitters and harm a billion-dollar pipeline. Remember that the CO2 Stream is a waste product for the emitter and will typically only be controlled to a quality limit imposed by the downstream transportation network. In some cases, emitters may pay more to have their low-quality emission transported and either blended or further purified further downstream. If off quality (corrosive ) fluids get into the network, the operator will have to have a strategy to remove these fluids as quickly as possible. Another issue is that each emitter coming into the network will be a custody transfer point, emitter for quality and flowrate (Max) and for the transportation max pressure. If these are out of balance, there will have to be contractual relationships. In other words, some emitter may be willing to pay higher prices to make sure that there CO2 is transported if network capacity is limited. These emitters want the network pressure to be kept down by having other emitters backed out. If the transport coordinator does not do this when capacity is limited, only the emitters with the biggest compressors/pumps will be able to get into the network (high pressure).

At the other end of the network, there are also complex issues with the wells and the storage. The first fact is that the injection system will float on the worst well (highest back pressure). So, at peak conditions, it may be required to shut-in the “bad’ wells to optimize the compressor. Higher flowrate but less boosting DP. Also, various reservoir types may be able to handle impurity types better than others. Some impurities when in the wrong reservoir type can have issue with blocking pores and other types could cause ground water contamination. So again, emitters at one end of the chain may need to be matched with the best reservoir type for their fluids. There will also be seasonal variations in CO2 Storage required and the network must be able to handle this. The final complex issue is liability. If the reservoir leaks who takes financial responsibility. At a recent conference, the general conclusion is that society must handle up to 10% leakage or else projects will not be viable.

Bio

Dr. Hochbaum is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the University of California, Irvine. He received his S.B. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley studying electrical and thermal transport phenomena in semiconductor nanowires. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University where his research explored bacterial community dynamics at interfaces. Prof. Hochbaum is the recipient of the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty award, and the ACS (Division of Inorganic Chemistry) and AFOSR Young Investigator awards. His lab studies and designs electronically conductive natural and synthetic supramolecular proteins, and seeks to understand and engineer chemical signaling and metabolic determinants of bacterial community development and antibiotic tolerance using chemical and physical approaches.

Abstract

Natural and Synthetic Designs of Conductive and Responsive Protein Nanowires

Electronic signals are the default carriers of information in solid-state devices, while biology mainly traffics in chemical and ionic signals. Materials that can transduce biological and electronic signals are key to bridging living systems with synthetic devices such as soft robotics, therapeutic and prosthetic implants, and wearable sensors. Ideal materials should mimic not only the soft mechanics of cells and tissue, but also the dynamic nature of biological systems in response to stimuli. This talk will cover our progress in understanding the structural basis for conductivity in bacterial cytochrome nanowires, and our development of stimuli-responsive, self-assembling, conductive peptide nanowires:

(1) Nature has evolved protein assemblies that conduct electronic charge over nanometer to centimeter distances as part of an anaerobic respiratory metabolic pathway called extracellular electron transfer. Our findings show that such assemblies in the model anaerobe, Geobacter sulfurreducens, are fibers made of cytochrome (heme-containing protein) polymers that array heme in one-dimensional chains along the fiber axes. This alignment of redox active heme supports long-range electron transport along the nanowires to facilitate oxidation of remote electron acceptors. Moreover, the geometric arrangement of heme is common to multi-heme c-type cytochromes in organisms across domains of life, suggesting a conserved structural basis for biological electron transport.

(2) We design heme-free and heme-binding peptides (short proteins) that self-assemble into conducting filaments and mimic the environmental responsiveness of other biological filaments. To address this challenge, we developed a platform for the programmable assembly of de novo peptides by balancing order and disorder inducing peptide sequence motif. This approach provides control over the hierarchical assembly of complex supramolecular peptide nanostructures. The gating of supramolecular interactions in response to pH, redox, and biochemical stimuli represent key advances towards the interconversion of biological signals across bionic interfaces and the integration of synthetic biology with a synthetic materials toolkit.

Bio

Dr. Shuya Wei is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering at UNM. She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University in 2017 and B. Eng in Bioengineering from Nanyang Technological University in 2013. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2017-2019. She was a recipient of the ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award and the ACS Petroleum Research Fund (PRF) Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) Award. Her research focuses on understanding the fundamental aspects of electrochemical processes occurring in electrodes and at electrode/electrolyte interfaces. Building on this knowledge, she aims to develop advanced metal-based batteries with high energy density for applications in energy and the environment.

Abstract

Rational Design of Interphases to Enable High Energy Metal-based Batteries

Advances in the basic science and engineering principles of electrochemical energy storage are imperative for significant progress in electronic devices.  Metal-based batteries, utilizing metals such as Li, Na, Al, and Zn as anodes, have garnered considerable attention due to their potential to enhance anode-specific capacity by up to 10 times compared to current state-of-the-art Li-ion batteries that employ graphitic anodes. These metal anodes also enable the use of highly energetic simple molecules like sulfur, oxygen, and carbon dioxide as cathodes, further enhancing the energy density at the cell level. However, a persistent challenge faced by most metal batteries is their tendency to fail due to short-circuits caused by dendrite growth during battery recharge and the increased resistance within the cell due to internal side reactions with the liquid electrolyte. In this presentation, I will discuss our research, which combines ion transport modeling and contemporary experimental efforts to gain a fundamental understanding and develop rational designs for electrode-electrolyte interphases. These designs aim to overcome the challenges associated with metal-based batteries. Specifically, our research has demonstrated that porous electrodes on the anode side can mitigate dendrite formation by reducing the diffusion-limited current density. Additionally, we have successfully designed cathodes and electrolytes to pair a metal anode with a small molecule (CO₂) gas cathode, resulting in rechargeable metal-CO₂ batteries. These developments pave the way for addressing the limitations of metal-based batteries and advancing their practical applications.

Bio

Research in our group investigates fundamental and applied issues in membrane protein biophysics, alternative energy sources, and nanotechnology. We seek to determine the effect of local environments on chemical reaction dynamics, from cellular membranes to photovoltaic devices to plasmonic nanomaterials. We develop and apply new spectroscopic and microscopic techniques to examine how molecules react, following their dynamics on the nanometer length scale with femtosecond time resolution. Currently, we are working on developing a label-free, super-resolution imaging technique, determining the role of vibrations in driving electron transfer reactions, and using plasmons to monitor and catalyze chemical reactions. Our research is highly interdisciplinary, investigating current problems at the interface of chemistry, biology, and materials science.

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