Yayuan Liu, a Russell Croft Faculty Scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Hopkins, was awarded the Sloan Fellowship on Feb. 17, 2026, for her work in carbon capture, water remediation and electrochemical imaging platforms. The Sloan Fellowship is an award that grants early-stage researchers $75,000 over two years. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation values creativity, innovation, and leadership, selecting only 126 research fellows from more than a thousand of nominated applicants.
Liu completed her undergraduate studies at Nanyang Technological University, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering. With the support of Dr. Ciu in the Department of Materials Science Engineering, Liu earned her doctoral degree from Stanford, working on developing novel materials for next-generation batteries. Liu’s postdoctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) prompted her to shift to new and emerging areas in sustainable materials science, such as carbon capture and chemical separation, which form her current research focus.
“My training and interest in electrochemistry can really contribute to this type of application in a meaningful way,” Liu explained.
At her lab in Hopkins, Liu combines fundamental chemistry with electrical engineering to build more sustainable technology and combat climate change driven by anthropogenic emissions. Liu’s major goals include designing carbon capture materials, leveraging electrochemistry to improve mineral extraction technologies and water remediation methods, and engineering novel imaging systems to visualize electrochemical processes.
Liu asserted, “the current technologies are energy intensive; we are not implementing carbon capture technologies at a pace that is fast enough to mitigate climate issues.”
While implementing renewable energy is a valid means of mitigating climate change effects, Liu’s work in carbon capture aims to reduce the rate of global warming before it reaches irreversible deforestation and water level tipping points. Moreover, her carbon capture technologies offer another option to industries where switching to renewable energy sources is difficult. Liu’s current research on carbon capture focuses on tweaking low-energy, electrochemical processes to selectively capture carbon without degrading the oxygen existing in the atmosphere. In addition to increasing specificity of carbon capture materials, Liu detailed that her lab is also working towards ensuring that her findings can be applied in a cost-effective, practical manner.
“All of these iterations are trying to improve the technology and solve the critical challenges of the previous version. One of the big challenges is that they’re pretty sensitive to oxygen,” she said.
Mineral separation and water remediation are also significant methods used by the manufacturing industry to isolate essential materials while minimizing environmental impact. However, conventional methods including gravity separation and magnetic separation are heavily energy intensive. Similarly, chemical precipitation-driven separations often leave a large chemical footprint due to the use of unrecyclable chemicals. Liu has shown that electrochemistry can also be leveraged in mineral separation and water remediation efforts. It provides a lower-energy, more sustainable alternative that can be just as specific in isolating minerals from liquids, since electrons are being used as the driving force for the redox reactions.
“Electrochemistry gives us a handle to selectively target our ion of interest in a more dilute solution or a more complex solution because we can precisely tune what current we apply and what voltage we apply,” outlined Liu.
Using the funding from the Sloan Fellowship, Liu and her lab plan to adapt and scale their electrochemistry-based processes to practical real-life scenarios. They also hope to continue developing more cost-effective molecules for carbon capture, and are open to new opportunities and collaborations.
“[My research] is constantly evolving based on our learning in the lab and the students in the lab. It’s a learning experience for me, as well, which is really fun.”
As the primary investigator of the Liu Research Group, Liu serves as a mentor to her students, inspiring them to carry out impactful research while reflecting on the difficulties that come with the work.
“Research itself is really hard, and that’s okay: It means you’re doing something really challenging. Pick an important problem to solve and [pursue] the problem that you’re passionate about,” Liu advises.
