Chuqiao (Elise) Chen, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Barbara, and her collaborators were awarded top honors at the 2025 Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) Principal Investigators’ Meeting, held in Washington, D.C. The team won the Student and Postdoc Team Science Competition, besting more than twenty other research groups from across the country.
Representing the Center for Materials for Water and Energy Systems (M-WET)—an EFRC funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)—the winning team highlighted the leading-edge work by scientists from the University of Texas at Austin, UCSB, and the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. M-WET researchers are developing new materials and membrane-based technologies aimed at revolutionizing water purification methods.
“I am deeply excited and grateful to be part of this exceptional team,” said Chen, who joined UCSB as a postdoctoral fellow in the research groups of chemical engineering and materials professors Rachel Segalman and Glenn Fredrickson. “M-WET has been a catalyst for interdisciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration, constantly exposing researchers to wide-ranging fields and revealing the connections between them. This environment has encouraged me to remain inquisitive beyond my own project and has strengthened my ability to communicate with a broader scientific community.”
M-WET was launched in 2018 with a $10.75 million DOE grant and received a $12 million renewal in 2022. The center brings together a network of scientists applying advanced techniques in materials synthesis, characterization, and modeling to close fundamental knowledge gaps in polymer membrane science.
The team’s winning presentation, "Rational Design of Tougher SNIPS Membranes for Water and Energy Systems," detailed a collaborative effort that integrated synthesis, characterization, and computational modeling to co-design membranes that were both mechanically robust and highly efficient at separation. Chen, who studies the structures of mixed ion-electron conductors and designs hierarchical materials for water purification, described the contributions of the three M-WET partners.
“Drawing inspiration from classical thermoplastic literature, our collaborators at UT Austin designed a novel tetrablock copolymer that significantly enhances membrane toughness,” said Chen. “Using advanced X-ray techniques at the Advanced Light Source and NMR spectroscopy, we probed how nanoscale structures are formed during different stages of membrane fabrication. Finally, state-of-the-art simulations developed at UCSB revealed how processing conditions influence porous morphology, a key factor in transport properties.”
In addition to Chen, the competition team comprised UT Austin PhD student Noah P. Wamble, postdoctoral fellow José Carlos Diaz, graduate student Adam N. Mann, and scientist Louise Kuehster. Their talk was commended for its scientific excellence, cross-disciplinary integration, and alignment with the EFRC’s collaborative mission.
Sponsored by the DOE’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, the competition celebrated team-based science tackling complex energy and environmental challenges. Entries were judged by a panel of DOE experts on research quality, originality, and how effectively the team leveraged the EFRC’s multidisciplinary, multi-institutional structure.
“The interdisciplinary research culture has inspired me to work at the interface of theory and experiment,” said Chen, who earned her PhD in molecular engineering from the University of Chicago. “UCSB’s and M-WET’s combined strengths in both areas have provided unparalleled opportunities to learn and grow in each direction.”
