UCSB Alumnus Awarded the 2007 ExxonMobil Fellowship

Kyoung-Shin Choi, assistant professor of chemistry at Purdue University, will receive the 2007 ExxonMobil Faculty Fellowship in Solid State Chemistry at the upcoming ACS national meeting in Boston. The award, administered by the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry and made possible by a grant from ExxonMobil Research & Engineering, recognizes significant contributions to solid-state chemistry by junior faculty members at U.S. institutions.

Choi received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Seoul National University in South Korea in 1993 and 1995, respectively. She received a Ph.D. degree from Michigan State University in 2000 and then spent two years working with Professor Galen Stucky at the University of California, Santa Barbara as a postdoctoral researcher (2000-2002). Choi joined the chemistry faculty at Purdue University as an assistant professor in 2002. Choi's research employs electrochemistry as a main synthetic method to produce solid-state materials with controlled morphologies at various length scales. She has developed new synthetic strategies to precisely and rationally regulate basic growth processes by exploiting the intrinsic advantages of electrochemistry. Her methods generated enormous degrees of synthetic freedom and programmability in directing crystal shapes as well as nanostructure construction, and perhaps more importantly, demonstrated an ability to methodically tailor them. These capabilities make it possible to investigate the effects that micro- and nano-scale structures have on physical and chemical properties in a systematic manner, which is essential for both fundamental understanding and technological application of solid-state materials.

Colleagues describe Choi as a vibrant, tenacious researcher who is highly creative, insightful, resourceful, and intense. She is also known to be a superb team player who interacts exceptionally well with colleagues and coworkers.