Dr. Jun Liu, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University, has received a Faculty Early Career Development award, also known as the CAREER Award, from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award is one of the highest honors given by NSF to young faculty members in science and engineering.
NSF will provide $518,775 in funding over five years to support his project, ‘Pushing the Limit of Thermal Conductivity in Layered Materials’.
Identifying effective strategies to achieve exceptionally low thermal conductivity in solid-state materials can potentially push the extremes in heat conduction. Liu’s project seeks to enable novel thermal control functionalities in disordered, layered materials to be applied in sustainable energy infrastructure, such as energy savings by thermal insulation, energy storage in batteries, energy conversion in thermoelectrics, and thermal management in electronics. The integration of research, education, and outreach programs aims to raise the public awareness of challenges in sustainable energy, and motivate students to pursue appropriate education pathways to STEM occupations.
Liu received his B.S. in Power and Energy Engineering in 2008 from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2010 and 2013, respectively, both from University of Colorado at Boulder. Prior to joining NC State, he was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.