Yunfeng Lu

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

The University of California, Los Angeles

Human civilization is associated with the harvest and utilization of solar energy. Driven by the massive use of fossil fuels, the first industrial revolution (mainly driven by coal) and the second industrial revolution (mainly driven by oil) have established the modern civilization yet with ecological deterioration. Develop technologies that enable more effective harvest and storage of energy has emerged as one of the most essential topics. In this context, research work on the design and fabrication of better electrochemical devices (e.g., supercapaci-tors, batteries, and fuel cells) will be discussed, focusing on constructing more effective transport pathways for electrons and ions. Beyond the energy research, we recognize that living organisms are made from the basic elements (e.g., C, O, H, N and P), which consume energy and reproducing themselves through chemical transfor-mations such as the carbon cycle and nitrogen cycle. What differentiate the living organisms are their genomic codes, which govern the functions of the biomolecules (e.g., proteins) and biological systems. In this talk, re-search on design and fabrication of protein therapeutics will also be presented from the view of material design.

Biography:

Yunfeng Lu received his PhD from the University of New Mexico and Postdoctoral training at Sandia National La-boratories. His research interests are focused on composition and architecture design towards energy storage and conversion, including supercapacitors, lithium-ion batteries, lithium-metal batteries, flow batteries, interme-diate-temperature fuel cells, and effective methane conversion. Another research direction is on the design and synthesis of nanocapsules of proteins, si-RNA, and DNA, with high delivery efficiency, stability and activity. Exten-sive researches have been focusing on bio-distribution, therapeutic effects, immunoresponses and inter-cellular transport for imaging, cosmetic, therapeutic, bio-defense, and other applications.