Prestigious Award Offers $600,000 in Funding Over Four Years
Thao Tran, a 2015 Ph.D. graduate of University of Houston’s Department of Chemistry, received a prestigious Beckman Young Investigator Award from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. She is one of 11 recipients selected in 2023.
The award offers $600,000 in funding over four years. The 2023 awardees were selected from a pool of nearly 200 applicants after a three-part review led by a panel of scientific experts.
Awardees exemplify the Foundation’s mission of supporting the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences, particularly to foster the invention of methods, instruments and materials that will open new avenues of research in science.
Tran is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at Clemson University. Prior to joining the faculty at Clemson, she was a postdoctoral research associate at Johns Hopkins University’s Institute of Quantum Matter.
Her research team is interested in solving fundamental challenges in materials chemistry directly relevant to current energy and information technology research. The award will enable the Tran Lab to further explore chemistry for quantum technologies.
“Quantum and functional materials are at the forefront of new technological advances in quantum information science,” said Tran. “Despite impressive progress in advanced materials research, significant challenges await in terms of our fundamental understanding of the appropriate coupled spin, charge, orbital, and lattice degrees of freedom necessary for creating and tuning targeted physical phenomena and capabilities for materials.”
The Tran Lab aims to build desired functionalities into new quantum materials by combining chemical principles, appropriate synthetic techniques, advanced structural and physical properties characterization (e.g., advanced synchrotron X-ray, neutron diffraction, spectroscopic methods, magnetic, electronic, and optical properties), analytical modeling, and bonding theories.
In addition to emphasizing impactful research, Tran strives to cultivate the next generation of scientists by fostering a healthy lab climate that is conducive to learning, creativity, and professional development.
While pursuing her Ph.D. at UH, Tran’s doctoral advisor was Shiv Halasyamani, professor of chemistry. In the Halasyamani laboratory, Tran focused on the design and synthesis of new nonlinear optical materials. She discovered a number of new materials, and her work was published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Angewandte Chemie.
“I am grateful for the tremendous support and meaningful education experience that I received from my former advisor, Prof. Halasyamani, and the Department of Chemistry at University of Houston,” Tran said.
- Kathy Major, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics