Dr. Letian Dou, the Charles Davidson Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University, has received the 2023 College of Engineering Faculty Excellence Award in Early Career Research. The award will be presented at the Annual College of Engineering Faculty & Lecturer Excellence Awards on Friday, April 21, 2023.

Dr. Dou was nominated by Dr. Rakesh Agrawal, the Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering. “Letian is a brilliant researcher who is tackling tough and challenging nanomaterial problems with great creativity,” explained Dr. Agrawal. “He is multifaceted and his research spans both organic and inorganic chemistry. Therefore, it is no surprise that he has made contributions to an array of applications ranging from solar cells, light emitting diodes, thin film transistors, thermoelectric devices to recyclable polymers. In each area, he is contributing at the top of that field.”

Dr. Letian Dou obtained his B.S. in Chemistry from Peking University and his Ph.D. from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UCLA. Dou has been recognized by the Office of Naval Research with a Young Investigator (YIP) award, National Science Foundation with a NSF CAREER grant and was awarded the 2022 Owens Corning Early Career Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the 2022 Rising Star Award from Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology.

Dou’s impressive research contributes to some of the greatest challenges of our age – harvesting of solar energy and enabling circular economy for sustainability. His research group at Purdue, Letian Dou Group, focuses on the synthesis of hybrid materials, organic semiconductors, halide perovskites, and related optoelectronic properties and their device applications. 

“The halide perovskite field is crowded with large number of researchers worldwide; yet in the last five years [Dr. Dou] has established himself a leader in the field by using his ability to precision tailor organic molecules,” said Dr. Agrawal. “He then incorporates them in the perovskite materials to improve their stability and achieving solar cell efficiencies exceeding 24%. Similarly, he has precision tuned carbon-carbon bond length and strength to enable polymers that are more amenable to recycle.”

Dr. Dou has delivered several invited presentations at conferences and lectures, while he also has over 80 published papers with more than 20,000 citations, and nine patents.

“Letian’s ability to seek collaborators to solve challenging problems is equally unique,” continued Dr. Agrawal. Within a short time at Purdue, he has a large number of collaborators, all working together to solve challenging and interdisciplinary problems. Personally, I continue to enjoy our technical discussions and looking forward to gratifying collaboration. It is wonderful to have him as a colleague.”

Learn more about Dr. Letian Dou at: https://engineering.purdue.edu/ChE/people/ptProfile?resource_id=169342

Source: Dr. Rakesh Agrawal, agrawalr@purdue.edu

Writer: Jessica Johnson, john1690@purdue.edu