Younan Xia

Education

Xia received his PhD in physical chemistry from Harvard University with George M. Whitesides in 1996, his M.S. degree in inorganic chemistry from University of Pennsylvania with Alan G. MacDiarmid in 1993, and his B.S. degree in chemical physics from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 1987. He came to the United States of America in 1991.

Research

The current research of Xia and his group centers on the development of new chemistry, physics, and technological applications of nanostructured materials – a class of materials which feature sizes less than 100 nm. His research includes the chemistry and physics of nanomaterial synthesis, the application of nanomaterials to biomedical research, and developing nanomaterials for energy- and environment-related applications.

Xia co-invented soft lithography while he was a PhD student with George M. Whitesides at Harvard University. As an independent researcher, he and his group have made original and important contributions to the following areas: colloidal crystals and their photonic applications, colloidal assembly, one-dimensional nanostructures, electrospinning and alignment of nanofibers, electrospun nanofibers as scaffolds for tissue engineering, and shape-controlled synthesis of colloidal nanocrystals and their applications in plasmonics, spectroscopy, heterogeneous catalysis, and electrocatalysis, invention of silver nanostructures with many different morphologies such as nanowires and nanocubes, and invention of gold nanocages and exploration of their biomedical applications.

Involvements with academic journals

Xia has been an Associate Editor of Nano Letters since 2002, and has served or is serving on the Advisory Boards of Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2011–), Advanced Healthcare Materials (2011–, inaugural chairman of the advisory board), ChemNanoMat (2015-), Chemical Physics Letters (2014-), Chinese Journal of Chemistry (2014-), Chemistry: A European Journal (2014-), Cancer Nanotechnology (2014-), Particle & Particle Systems Characterization (2013-), Accounts of Chemical Research (2010–), Chemistry: An Asian Journal (2010–), Cancer Nanotechnology (2010–), Journal of Biomedical Optics (2010–), Nano Research (2009–), Science of Advanced Materials (2009–), Nano Today (2006–), Chemistry of Materials (2005–2007), Langmuir (2005–2010, 2013-), International Journal of Nanoscience (2004–), International Journal of Nanotechnology (2004–), and Advanced Functional Materials (2001–). He has also served as a Guest Editor of special issues for Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials]], MRS Bulletin, and Accounts of Chemical Research.

Awards

Xia has received a number of prestigious awards, including ACS Fellow (2014); Highly cited researcher in chemistry and materials science (2014); Nano Today Award (2013); the MRS Fred Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Nanoscience (2013), the ACS National Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2013), the AIMBE Fellow (2011), MRS Fellow (2009 ), NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2006), Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award (2005), Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar (2002), David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2000), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2000), NSF Early Career Development Award (2000), ACS Victor K. LaMer Award (1999), and Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award (1997).

Xia was named by Times Higher Education one of the Top 10 chemists (#5) in the world from 1999-2009 based on the number of citations per paper. He was also ranked one of the Top 100 material scientists (#4) and top 100 chemists (#35) in the world from 2000-2010 based on the number of citations per paper. He was named one of the world's most influential scientific minds in 2014 in the fields of Chemistry and Materials Science.