New Faculty Hua Wang and Charles Schroeder join the department

Hua Wang joins the department after completing a postdoctoral position with Professor David J. Mooney’s group at Harvard University from 2016–2020. He earned a BS in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2012 and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at UrbanaChampaign in 2016. Wang’s research will take advantage of several strong affiliations at Illinois, including the Cancer Center at Illinois, Carle College of Medicine, the Department of Bioengineering, and the Beckman Institute.

With a theme of leveraging chemistry and materials tools to address biomedical questions and improve human health, Wang’s lab will work on biomaterials, metabolic cell labeling, cancer immunotherapy, and immunoengineering for regenerative medicine. These research directions are built upon his PhD and postdoctoral trainings with his own interpretation of biomedical challenges and opportunities, which he expects will evolve in the future.

“My lab will conduct research at the intersection of multidisciplinary fields across materials science, chemistry, bioengineering, and immunology,” said Wang. “I welcome students from different departments and who are interested in biomedical research to join us. They will be able to acquire versatile skill sets and bring their expertise to interdisciplinary research fields, which will be beneficial for their career development.”

Charles Schroeder has been an affiliate faculty in MatSE since 2016. He will hold a joint appointment (25%) with Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Schroeder’s research aims to understand the physical and chemical properties of soft materials using single molecule techniques. In recent years, his group has pioneered new methods to precisely interrogate single molecules to understand materials properties ranging from nonequilibrium dynamics to charge transport.

At the Beckman Institute where his research is based, Schroeder is Co-Leader of the Molecular Science and Engineering Theme. This highly interdisciplinary research theme is focused on several strategic areas and combines faculty and researchers in theory-driven computational molecular science and experiments. The group also includes ChBE faculty members Charles Sing and Ying Diao; MatSE faculty Chris Evans, Ken Schweizer, Dallas Trinkle, and Qian Chen; and MechSE faculty Randy Ewoldt.

“This is a great opportunity for experimentalists to work with computational scientists in the area of molecular materials, combining new advances in automated synthesis with data-driven design and understanding of new pathways and molecules,” Schroeder said.