Jackie Ying (1987- B.E. summa cum laude in Chemical Engineering, The Cooper Union; 1991 - PhD Chemical Engineering, Princeton University) is the Executive Director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), Singapore. Before taking the reigns at IBN, Professor Ying studied with Prof. Herbert Gleiter at the Institute for New Materials, Saarbrücken, Germany as NSF-NATO Post-doctoral Fellow and Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow. She joined the Chemical Engineering faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1992, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996 and Professor in 2001. She continues to hold the title of Adjunct Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT.

Prof. Ying has been recognized with a number of research awards including: the ACerS Ross C. Purdy Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, NSF Young Investigator Award, Technology Review TR100 Young Innovator Award, and AIChE Allan P. Colburn Award. She was elected to the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina in 2005, and is currently the youngest member of the Academy. AIChE named her as one of the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era”. Prof. Ying’s laboratory has been responsible for the development of several novel wetchemical and physical vapor synthesis approaches that create nanocomposites, nanoporous materials and nanodevices with unique size-dependent characteristics. Prof. Ying has authored over 200 articles, and presented over 230 invited lectures at international conferences. Prof. Ying has over 100 patents issued or pending, and has served on the Advisory Boards of 5 start-up companies and 1 venture capital fund. Prof. Ying is the Editor-in-Chief of Nano Today, is Advisory Editor of Materials Today and serves on the Editorial Board for numerous international journals.

This talk describes the synthesis and properties of two classes of nano-structured materials: nanoparticulate materials and nanoporous materials for catalytic and biomaterials applications. Nanoparticulate materials are made up of crystallites or particles of ~10 nm. Through controlled synthesis in reverse microemulsions, my laboratory has achieved complex oxide nanoparticles with ultrahigh thermal stability to effectively catalyze methane combustion. This approach has also enabled us to derive polymeric nanoparticles for the glucose-sensitive delivery of insulin. Through chemical precipitation and additive dispersion, we have created nanocomposite systems which are highly selective and sensitive semiconductor sensors, bioactive ceramic orthopedic implants, and efficient gene delivery vectors.

My laboratory synthesizes novel nanoporous materials with tailored oxidation states, coordination chemistry, and electronic structure. We have found that sol-gel processing can be combined with supramolecular templating agents to derive well-defined mesoporous and microporous transition metal oxides (termed TMS). The compositional flexibility and pore size tailoring of the TMS molecular sieves open new possibilities for catalytic applications beyond the silicate-based zeolitic materials or mesoporous MCM-41. We have also attained mesocellular foams by using triblock copolymers and swelling agents in templating silicate precursors. These ultralarge-pore materials have been used to fixate organometallic ligands for effective epoxidation, hydroxylation, Heck catalysis and asymmetric hydrogenation. The resulting heterogeneous catalysts provide excellent activity, enantioselectivity, and reusability.