Four researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, including a CCIL researcher, were named recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers.
The winners this year are health and kinesiology professor Marni Boppart, physics professor Barry Bradlyn, chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Ying Diao and computer science professor Edgar Solomonik.


CCIL researcher Ying Diao’s research focuses on understanding the assembly of functional polymers and innovating printing approaches that enable structural control down to the molecular and nanoscale to enable next-generation electronics and greener energy. She has received many awards for her work. She was named to the list of Technology Review Innovators Under 35 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry, a NASA Early Career Faculty Award and the AIChE Allen P. Colburn Award for Excellence in Publications. Diao also is affiliated with chemistry, materials science and engineering, the Beckman Institute and the Materials Research Laboratory at Illinois.
To learn more about the other award recipients, you can find the original article from the Illinois News Bureau here.