UCSB Alumnus Awarded the 2007 Alan T. Waterman Award

Peidong Yang
Associate Professor of Chemistry
University of California, Berkeley

Alan T. Waterman Award, 2007

CITATION
For outstanding contributions in the creative synthesis of semiconductor nanowires and their heterostructures, and innovations in nanowire-based photonics, energy conversion, and nanofluidic applications.

BACKGROUND
Professor Yang received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1993 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University in 1997 for work on flux line pinning in the laboratory of Professor Charles Lieber. His postdoctoral research was in the area of nano and hierarchically structured composite materials with Professor Galen Stucky at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He began his faculty appointment on July 1, 1999 in the Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley. In addition to his faculty appointments, he serves as the deputy director for the NSF-funded Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems, Berkeley and as a faculty scientist of Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Professor Yang is the first chairperson for the subdivision of Nanoscience, American Chemical Society. He also serves as associate editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Professor Yang has received numerous awards and fellowships: Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2001-2004), MIT Technology Review TR 100 (2003), Camille Dreyfus New Faculty Award (1999), the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award (2002), National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award (2000-2004), ExxonMobil Solid State Chemistry Fellowship (2000), Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2004), Dupont Young Professorship (2004), MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award (2004), Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics (2004), and ACS Pure Chemistry Award (2005).

Professor Yang is a leader in one-dimensional semiconductor structures whose work has opened pathways in the synthesis of nanostructured materials, with applications to new areas of nanotechnology including optoelectronics, energy conversion and sensing. World leaders in his discipline testify to the scientific importance of his work, the technological opportunities, and the high regard in which he is held.

The Yang research group is interested in the synthesis of new classes of materials and nanostructures, with an emphasis on developing new synthetic approaches and understanding the fundamental issues of structural assembly and growth that will enable the rational control of material composition, micro/nano-structure, property and functionality. They are interested in the fundamental problems of electron, photon, phonon and ionic confinement within one-dimensional nanostructures and their applications in nanophotonics, nanoelectronics, energy conversion and nanofluidics.