News

2026

  • 03/2026: Congratulations to Dr. Tamalika Ash on joining Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), India, as an Assistant Professor! We wish her continued success and all the best in her future endeavors.
  • 02/2026: Our new paper titled "Ovalbumin as a PFAS carrier protein in aquatic environments" published in Cell Reports Physical Science! Congrats to Amara on leading the work as first author! (👉See the NDSU News and other news coverages PTINews, Devdiscourse, NDTV.)
  • 01/2026: Liujing Wang was selected for the 2026 Alexander Lippisch Memorial Scholarship at Iowa State University, recognizing outstanding achievement and promise in aerospace engineering. Congratulations!

2025

  • 11/2025: Dr. Xia received the 2025 SNO Emerging Investigator Award!
  • 10/2025: Our collaborative paper "Approaching highly stable optoelectronic device operation at elevated temperature by locking backbone torsion of conjugated polymers" was published in Matter!
  • 10/2025: Congrats to Long Chen on winning the Teaching Excellence (TEX) Award from ISU Graduate College!
  • 09/2025: Our paper "Molecular insights into the interfacial adhesion and chain adsorption of silicone polymers via nanoindentation" published in Macromolecules as a cover article.
  • 08/2025: Congrats to Liujing Wang on receiving the Catron Graduate Fellowship from the Catron Center for Solar Energy Research at ISU!
  • 05/2025: Congrats to Lan Xu on winning the Teaching Excellence (TEX) Award from ISU Graduate College!
  • 04/2025: Congrats to Sara Tolba and Kamrun Keya on successfully passing their PhD final oral defenses! Great accomplishment!
  • 03/2025: Keya won the IBM-Zerner Student Award for her presentation at the 64th Sanibel Symposium! Congratulations!
  • 01/2025: Ahmad Malkawi joined our group as a new PhD student! Welcome!

2024

  • 12/2024: Congrats to Liujing Wang on completing her MS degree! Liujing will continue her PhD studies in our group.
  • 12/2024: Congrats to Amara on passing the final oral defense for her doctoral study!
  • 11/2024: Dr. Xia was selected fro the inaugural cohort of ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering, recognized at the 2024 IMECE in Portland, OR. 
  • 11/2024: Congrats to Amara Arshad on winning the Student Award at the 13th SNO Conference!
  • 09/2024: Congrats to Sara Tolba on starting her new position as a Computational Scientist and Research Facilitator at NDSU CCAST!
  • 07/2024: Dr. Xia, along with other NSF CAREER Award recipients from ISU, was featured by Iowa State Research!
  • 05/2024: Congrats to Liujing on winning the Poster Award at the 5th Nano@IAState Meeting!
  • 05/2024: Congrats to Liujing Wang on winning the Teaching Excellence (TEX) Award from ISU Graduate College!
  • 04/2024: Congrats to Sara Tolba on receiving the CyberInfrastructure (CI) Assistantship Award!
  • 04/2024: Congrats to Wenjian Nie on successfully defending his doctoral dissertation!
  • 03/2024: Congrats to Sarah Ghazanfari on starting her new professional faculty position as a Computation Scientist at Virginia Tech! Wish her the best for her future endeavors!
  • 02/2024: Our group launched a new research website. More updates and information will follow!

2023

  • 12/2023: We are excited to start a new collaborative project on "AI/ML Design of Functional Coatings" ($5M) funded by the Office of Naval Research. Congrats to the project team!
  • 10/2023: Congrats to Sarah on successfully defending her doctoral dissertation!
  • 10/2023: Our new collaborative paper was published in Advanced Materials as a front cover article in the "Rising Stars" collection. Congrats to Zhaofan and Sara on being the co-first authors of the work along with Dr. Xiaodan Gu's group!
  • 09/2023: Our group is excited to kick off the new "DREAM" project ($1M) funded by DOE in collaboration with Dr. Xiaodan Gu from USM!
  • 08/2023: Dr. Xia received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award! Congratulations! (See the news coverage from Iowa State U and Northwestern!)
  • 08/2023: Dr. Xia joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University as a (tenured) Associate Professor!
  • 05/2023: Congrats to Zhaofan and Yangchao on successfully defending their final doctoral dissertations!
  • 04/2023: Dr. Xia has been recognized as the RSC MSDE Emerging Investigator. See our featured work.
  • 04/2023: Congrats to Yangchao Liao on winning the COE Graduate Research Assistant of the Year Award!
  • 03/2023: Our new paper “Crumpling Defective Graphene Sheets” was published in Nano Letters as a cover article! Congrats to Yangchao, the first author of the work!
  • 03/2023: Dr. Xia has received the ACS PMSE Young Investigator Award!
  • 02/2023: Dr. Xia has received the Innovation in Teaching Award!
  • 01/2023: Congrats to Anas on successfully defending his doctoral dissertation! A great accomplishment!

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