2025 Materials Today Rising Star Award Winners

The Materials Today Rising Star Awards recognize researchers in materials science and engineering who have demonstrated exceptional talent and promise, and who have shown significant potential to become future leaders in their field.

This year, we are excited to announce 9 winners across 5 different research fields: biomaterials, energy conversion & storage, materials data science & AI, sustainability, and quantum materials & electronics. These researchers have been selected not only for the outstanding quality of their work, but also for the real impact their contributions have had in their fields of study.

We invite you to learn more about the winners below and encourage you to view our special article collection, featuring selected works from these inspiring researchers!

Biomaterials

1. Can you tell us a little about your research interests? My main research interests are in bioinspired materials: learning about how nature and biology have developed complex materials with outstanding properties, and applying their design rules to new bioinspired materials to solve current technological problems.

2. What excites you about biomaterials research? I am excited about biomaterials as a very interesting way to interface synthetic and biological systems. As a society, we still have many challenges in different applications that lack good integration of synthetic and biological interfaces, from synthetic materials in bio and healthcare applications (medical devices facing problems of biocompatibility, infection, inflammatory responses, etc.) to biological materials in non-bio applications (robotics, sensing, sustainability, etc.). Biomaterials offer a very versatile toolbox to design new materials and innovative solutions to many of these challenges, bringing lessons from nature to modern science and engineering. It is very exciting and fun for our group!

3. What are you currently researching? We are currently working on biomaterials systems that can adapt to different environments, including self-healing materials (that can autonomously repair mechanical damage) and biomaterials in extreme conditions (performance in high/cold temperatures, growth of bacterial biofilms, etc.) to improve their durability, long-term performance, and overall reliability of devices.

4. What are your future research goals? I am most excited about our research projects on adaptive materials and about working with our amazing team of students, postdocs, and collaborators. We are looking forward to growing the group and exploring new ideas on bioinspired materials and devices and transitioning them out of the lab for testing and deployment.

1. Can you tell us a little about your research interests? The function of living tissues and organs is intimately linked to their architecture. Through my career, I have been fascinated by how stem cells heal tissues in response to signals from their surrounding environment. In my research, I investigate how to replicate those signals to unlock regeneration, and bring new therapies to patients. To achieve this goal, I develop advanced biofabrication and bioprinting technologies, smart cell-instructive biomaterials and state-of-the-art stem cell engineering technologies.

2. What excites you about biomaterials research? I develop novel light-based bioprinting strategies to build engineered living tissues. Sculpting light fields in 3D, it is possible to enact spatial and temporal control on how materials are printed and how their mechanical properties and chemical distribution can match the anisotropic nature of human tissues. Moreover, light stimuli can directly instruct cell behavior. Altogether, I find light and photonics techniques extremely powerful to unlock the production of functional human tissues for developing in vitro models and regenerative therapies.

3. What are you currently researching? I am developing techniques based on light and other physical stimuli to create living tissues in the timeframe of seconds. I am also investigating how machine learning and artificial intelligence can guide a new generation of bioprinters, that can produce better tissues, that capture human physiology with unprecedented precision and with high degree of automation. One key application is in the development of liver and pancreas constructs for tissue regeneration.

4. What are your future research goals? I am focusing on different biomedical applications of engineered tissues, but I am especially interested in synthetic biology techniques to understand the maturation of our endocrine system during embryonic development, and the combination of these techniques with bioprinting to create transplantable tissues to treat diabetes and other related diseases.

Energy Conversion & Storage

1. Can you tell us a little about your research interests? Energy storage materials, interface, advanced characterizations.

2. What excites you about energy conversion and storage research? Energy storage and conversion research excites me because it drives innovation at the intersection of chemistry, materials science, and engineering. Advancing how we store and utilize energy is key to achieving greater efficiency, reliability, and accessibility in modern technologies. This field lays the groundwork for resilient, future-ready energy systems that empower technological progress and address evolving societal needs.

3. What are you currently researching? My team focuses on energy storage systems beyond conventional Li-ion chemistry. Batteries are inherently complex systems in which every component is indispensable, and the interactions among them ultimately determine the overall stability, safety, and functionality. We investigate each component and its interfacial behavior to understand and control these coupled processes. To achieve this, we push the frontiers of materials design, synthesis, and advanced characterization, aiming to uncover fundamental principles that guide the development of next-generation energy storage technologies.

4. What are your future research goals? My future research aims to enable energy storage systems that are safe, sustainable, and based on earth-abundant elements. I strive to discover new materials and uncover fundamental scientific principles that can lead to the development of next-generation electrochemical chemistries and transformative energy technologies.

1. Can you tell us a little about your research interests? My research focuses on discovering and advancing materials for energy storage, accelerating materials synthesis through robotics, AI, and data-driven approaches, and developing innovative chemical processes to transform minerals into battery-ready materials.

2. What excites you about energy conversion and storage research? I’m most excited about discovering new materials and the synthesis strategies needed to realize them, especially electrodes and solid electrolytes that can push performance limits with sustainability in mind. Leveraging AI and automation to accelerate this discovery and optimization opens up opportunities to uncover design principles and innovations.

3. What are you currently researching? My group has been developing materials for Na-ion batteries and all-solid-state batteries. We are also designing processes for converting minerals to batteries.

4. What are your future research goals? I aim to accelerate the discovery of next-generation electrodes and solid electrolytes by integrating autonomous synthesis, AI-driven optimization, and advanced characterization, while also developing sustainable processes to produce battery materials directly from minerals.

1. Can you tell us a little about your research interests? I specialize in exploring oxide-based catalysts for hydrogen-based energy conversion technologies. For this purpose, I use oxide epitaxy to synthesize model catalysts that are precisely tailored in their properties, for instance with respect to their defect structure, to investigate how material changes on the atomic level influence catalytic performance. These catalytic films mimic the surface of single powder grains of functional catalysts and enable detailed insights into electrochemically active interfaces. The main objective here lies in transferring the mechanistic insights obtained from these well-defined model catalysts into design principles for real-world catalysts.

2. What excites you about energy conversion and storage research? Efficient energy storage and conversion is one of the major challenges of our time, essential for achieving sustainable, net-zero energy technologies that are necessary to prevent further ecological collapse. I feel fortunate to be able to focus my work on these challenges and hope to make a meaningful contribution.

3. What are you currently researching? My research focuses on linking surface changes that inevitably occur under relevant operating conditions of catalysts to their performance. I aim to achieve a deeper understanding of the evolution of correlated chemical, structural, and electronic properties at solid-liquid and solid-gas interfaces, with the goal of developing more efficient catalyst designs that may help to mitigate the impact of the current energy and climate crisis.

4. What are your future research goals? I want to continue contributing to understanding the response of energy materials in reaction environments, in the hope of achieving better predictability of their properties under operating conditions. Closing this knowledge gap could enable a new perspective on the design of energy materials, potentially guiding us toward the highly active and stable materials needed to make green energy technologies more competitive.

Materials Data Science & AI

1. Can you tell us a little about your research interests? Multiscale modeling, computational materials design, mechanics and physics of polymers, and polymer informatics.

2. What excites you about materials data science & AI research? AI enables a paradigm shift from intuition-driven discovery to data-driven design, transforming how we predict, synthesize, and optimize materials—especially polymers—with unprecedented speed and precision.

3. What are you currently researching? My current research focuses on data-driven and multiscale modeling of polymers and soft materials. By integrating machine learning, molecular simulations, and informatics, I aim to establish the composition–structure–property relationships that govern material performance and manufacturability. My group develops AI-guided frameworks for designing sustainable and high-performance polymers, including fire- and chemical-resistant polyimides, ion-selective membranes, and reprocessable vitrimer networks. We also build open, FAIR polymer databases and cyberinfrastructure to accelerate materials discovery and enable community-driven innovation.

4. What are your future research goals? My future research aims to integrate multiscale modeling, data science, and Agentic AI to establish predictive and interpretable frameworks for polymer and soft-matter design. I seek to develop physics-informed and explainable AI models that bridge molecular structures with macroscopic properties, accelerating the discovery of sustainable, recyclable, and manufacturable materials. By building self-evolving materials databases and coupling them with experimental and simulation data, my goal is to enable autonomous materials innovation while training the next generation of researchers fluent in both materials science and data science.

Sustainability

1. Can you tell us a little about your research interests? My research aims to tackle grand challenges at the energy-environment nexus by designing mass-transport channels and membranes for next-generation sustainable technologies, including energy-efficient separation, ionic sieving, carbon capture, clean water production, renewable energy generation, and wearable bioelectronics.

2. What excites you about sustainability research? Separation processes consume over 50% of global industrial energy. What excites me is that developing high-performance membranes can transform industrial separations—replacing energy-intensive techniques with efficient, cost-effective, and more sustainable alternatives. In addition, advanced membranes are unlocking new capabilities in catalysis and clean-energy systems—water splitting, CO₂ reduction, fuel cells, and redox-flow batteries—making them increasingly important at the energy–environment nexus.

3. What are you currently researching? My research group at the School of Materials science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological university, Singapore, designs nanochannel membranes for selective transport of gases, liquids, and ions. Target applications include CO₂ capture, hydrogen production, metal-resource recovery, and biomolecular recognition. We also pursue cross-disciplinary integrations—embedding advanced membranes into electrocatalysis platforms, smart sensors, and bioelectronic systems (e.g., neural interfaces)—where channel materials and membranes are key enabling components.

4. What are your future research goals? My goal is to establish a scalable membrane-synthesis platform that produces precisely controlled pore architectures to tailor molecular and ionic transport. Based on this, I aim to translate my fundamental membrane research into practical, industry-ready solutions. Ultimately, I hope to develop technologies that address pressing needs in energy, environmental sustainability, and healthcare.

Quantum Materials & Electronics

1. Can you tell us a little about your research interests? I explore quantum nanophotonics for applications in quantum networking and quantum simulation. I have been fascinated with quantum information since the early 2000s and being able to build quantum hardware in solid state is very fulfilling. Color centers in silicon carbide have excellent properties for such applications and my group is pushing boundaries of nanofabrication and integration in this platform. Our goal is to make scalable and portable hardware capable of networking quantum computers and sensors as well as creating exotic states of light and matter.

2. What excites you about quantum materials & electronics research? Quantum Materials is a highly interdisciplinary area that combines physics, material science and electrical engineering. I enjoy working at the boundary of disciplines and combining different ways of thinking about the same material system.

3. What are you currently researching? I am currently exploring several directions of color center and quantum simulation research. In the clean room, my group is developing angled-etching processes which can fabricate triangular photonics and asymmetric devices in a wafer-scale process. My vision is to make complex and efficient quantum optical circuits for information processing. In another line of research, we are using near-term quantum computers to co-develop quantum optical technologies. By simulating emitter-cavity physics in other quantum platforms, we are gaining understanding of phenomena our future photonic devices will be based on.

4. What are your future research goals? In future research, I hope to increase interaction strengths of color centers and cavities and work with more complex photonic architectures that could give us an exciting playground for all photonic quantum simulation and for indistinguishable light emission at wavelengths compatible with low-loss fiber propagation in a quantum network. Hybrid integration between material platforms is also a direction I plan to pursue to maximize on these goals. Another goal for my group is to use photonic elements to decipher properties of promising color centers and work with theorists and experimentalists in the field to uncover the best quantum emitter for quantum information processing applications. Finally, I plan to continue exploring how near term quantum computers can help us gain knowledge about open quantum systems in optical platforms.

1. Can you tell us a little about your research interests? My main research interests are in the broad area of light-matter interaction and ultrafast spectroscopy of quantum materials.

2. What excites you about quantum materials and electronics research? The field of quantum materials offers a multitude of possibilities, which enable us to uncover and control entirely new physical phenomena where light and matter interact in unexpected ways. This field merges fundamental science with significant technological impact, promising advanced quantum devices and energy-efficient electronics.

3. What are you currently researching? I am focusing on two burgeoning research areas of cavity materials engineering and chiral phononics. Cavity materials engineering deals with designing optical cavities that can control and enhance the electromagnetic vacuum fluctuating fields. These cavity quantum fluctuations can strongly interact with matter, resulting in its ground state modification.

4. What are your future research goals? I want to understand the underlying physics of strong light–matter interactions in various quantum materials, both in equilibrium (ground state modification due to cavity embedding) and far from equilibrium (driven by ultrafast laser pulses). I believe that this research direction will lead to the development of low-power terahertz electronics, integrated nonlinear optics, and quantum information science applications.