Babak Anasori, the Reilly Rising Star Associate Professor of Materials and Mechanical Engineering, has demonstrated a combination of originality, sustained productivity and broad influence that is not typical at his career stage. His diligence in applying this work ethic to the transformation of an entire field has earned him one of the College of Engineering’s top faculty honors, the Excellence Award for Early Career Research. 

 

He will be honored alongside other College of Engineering recipients on April 24 during a banquet and awards ceremony. 

 

“Purdue Engineering has approximately 500 outstanding faculty members, and it is deeply meaningful to receive this recognition from colleagues within the college,” Anasori said. “Research is rarely an individual effort, and this award reflects the dedication of my students, postdocs, collaborators and mentors. It is motivating to see our work recognized at this level, and it encourages me to continue pushing the boundaries of materials discovery while training the next generation of engineers.”

 

Anasori made a name for himself as a postdoctoral researcher at Drexel University, reporting the groundbreaking discovery of ordered double-transition-metal MXenes. This introduced a fundamentally new paradigm for atomic-scale design in 2D materials and effectively established the field of ordered MXenes. 

 

With this level of success as a postdoc, he was highly recruited by top universities. Purdue was the first to make an offer. “I accepted right away,” said Anasori, who was hired through the university’s Moveable Dream Hires program, which has an overarching goal of attracting high-performing, top-caliber faculty. 

 

“Purdue offers an excellent combination of depth in materials science, strength in manufacturing and engineering scale-up and a culture that values both fundamental discovery and translational impact,” Anasori said. “The opportunity to expand my research across West Lafayette and Indianapolis, while collaborating with leading experts in all research areas, made Purdue the ideal environment to grow an ambitious and interdisciplinary research program.”

 

MXenes (pronounced “maxines”) are nanomaterials, a family of 2D transition metal carbides, carbonitrides and nitrides that are conductive, durable and impermeable to electromagnetic radiation. Applications include materials for energy storage and generation, lighter and stronger composites, electromagnetic interface shielding, biomedicine and carbon capture utilization. 

 

Since launching his independent lab in 2019 at IUPUI (now Purdue University Indianapolis), Anasori has continued his trajectory of firsts. In 2021, his group synthesized the first high-entropy MXenes, overcoming a long-standing barrier and opening up new opportunities in electronics, magnetism and catalysis. He was the first to introduce MXenes as active building blocks in ultra-high temperature ceramics, demonstrating how nanoscale chemistry influences densification, phase evolution and stability at elevated temperatures. This work, published in Advanced Science and Advanced Composites & Hybrid Materials in 2025, established a new research direction at the interface of 2D materials and refractory ceramics. 

 

Also in 2025: Anasori’s group published its discovery of tungsten-based MXenes in Nature Synthesis; and in Science, established the critical threshold of seven elements to overcome enthalpic ordering, an insight that guides not only MXene design, but also the ballooning broader field of entropy-stabilized materials. 

 

Anasori’s work has drawn support from the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. His newest research, backed by nearly $1 million from the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology, focuses on tailoring atomic-scale defects and material structure to enhance MXenes for next-generation electronic devices. 

 

“We all know how competitive research grant proposals are,” wrote one of his nominators. “Securing multiple peer-reviewed grants early in a career is a strong indication of a principal investigator’s vision and potential for leadership in science.”

 

This recognition reinforces his research and enhances his lab’s visibility within the College of Engineering and beyond.

 

“It will help us attract outstanding students, postdoctoral researchers and collaborators. It also provides important momentum as we continue expanding the scope and impact of our materials research,” Anasori said. 

 

Having achieved clear national and global recognition and impact beyond academia, Anasori is frequently sought out by leading scientists in the MXene community to organize major international events. With his help, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Nanotechnology Applications and Properties Conference in Slovakia was the largest symposium on MXenes in 2025. 

 

Also deeply engaged in the Materials Research Society (MRS), he is one of only five meeting co-chairs for the 2027 Fall Meeting — a flagship international conference for an expected 6,000 attendees. Within MRS, he was the inaugural chair of the Early Career Professionals Subcommittee, serving for six years and establishing a Meet the Faculty Candidate Poster Session that is one of the most widely attended career-focused events at society meetings. And, in 2024, the MRS awarded him the Kavli Foundation Early Career Lectureship in Materials Science.

 

Anasori has been named a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher every year since 2019, placing him among a small group whose publications consistently rank in the top 1% of citations worldwide. He has a Google Scholar h-index of 110, and his work has garnered more than 77,000 citations. 

 

Additional reading:

https://stories.purdue.edu/babak-anasori-accelerates-innovation-hands-on-learning-for-students-in-nanomaterials/