Announcement: The Zeng Lab is relocating to the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, starting August 2026. New contact email: yan.zeng@vanderbilt.edu.
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The Zeng Research Lab develops innovative materials for clean energy technologies and chemical processes for critical energy minerals by integrating materials synthesis, characterization, lab automation, artificial intelligence, and thermodynamic modeling.Β
Group Updates
Group Updates
April 2026, Dr. Zeng gave an invited talk on "Autonomous Laboratory for Energy Materials Synthesis and Discovery" at the Soft Materials, Autonomous Experimentation & Science Policy Symposium (the Soft AE NRT Symposium 2026) at Penn. Check the link
Dec. 2025, Dr. Zeng gave an invited talk on "Designing Sodium Battery Materials in the Disordered Rocksalt and NASICON Frameworks" at Pacifichem in Hawaii.
Dec. 2025, Dr. Zeng gave an invited talk on "A Guided Platform for Automated Hydrothermal Synthesis of Inorganic Materials" at MRS Fall Meetings in Boston.
Nov. 2025, Dr. Zeng received the 2025 Materials Today Rising Star Award in Energy Conversion & Storage.Β
Nov. 2025, Ajay passed the candidacy exam. Congrats π
Nov. 2025, Ashleigh joined the Zeng Lab. Welcome!
Oct. 2025, Evelyn defended her Master's thesis as the first student graduated from the Zeng Lab. Congrats π
Oct. 2025, Elena passed the candidacy exam. Congrats π
Sept. 2025, Dr. Zeng gave an invited talk at the 7th Battery and Energy Storage Conference | AIChE meeting and joined the panel discussion on AI for energy storage. - Check the link
August 2025, A collaborative work between the Zeng, Ouyang, and Chen groups on discovering disordered cathode materials "Origin of Enhanced Disorder in High Entropy Rocksalt Type Li-ion Battery Cathodes" is published on EES Batteries - Check the link π
August 2025, Elena Scivally was awarded the Deanβs Award for Doctoral Excellence. Congrats π
July 2025, A forthcoming book "Treatise on Process Metallurgy" is posted, where Dr. Zeng and co-authors contributed to a chapter on "Hydrometallurgical Processing of Li-ion Battery Materials" - Check the link π
June 2025, Welcome Kaia and Felix, high school students from the Young Scholars Program, joining us for summer research. They will be participating in synthesis automation and battery projects.Β
June 2025, A collaborative work between the Zeng and the Ouyang groups, "Aqueous stability of metallic materials and metal oxides", is published on Chemistry of Materials - Check the link π
June 2025, The Zeng Lab paper "Accelerated development of battery materials leveraging artificial intelligence and automation" is published on MRS Communications - Check the link π
May 2025, Dr. Zeng has been selected as one of 36 recipients of the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards - Check the link π
May 2025, The Zeng Lab paper "News and Views: Self-driving nanoparticle synthesis" is published on Nature Chemical Engineering - Check the link π
April 2025, Dr. Zeng gave an invited talk at the MRS Spring conferences and was awarded the Early Career Distinguished Presenters.
April 2025, Dr. Zeng attended the 2nd Scialog on Automating Chemical Laboratories - Check the link π‘
Feb. 2025, The Zeng Lab has been funded as part of the DOE's Low-cost Earth-abundant Na-ion Storage (LENS) Consortium - Check the link π
Feb. 2025, The Zeng Lab paper on autonomous laboratories is published in Nature Computational Science - Check the link π
Nov. 2024, Welcome graduate students (Evelyn, Xiaozhao, Seth, Nat, Brandon) and a new postdoc (Dr. Tong Zhao) to the Zeng Lab!
Oct. 2024, The Zeng Lab paper on ionic conductors is published in Advanced Energy Materials - Check the link π
Sept. 2024, The Zeng Group and multiple rotating students set up a robotic liquid handler, named Circe (name credit: Elena). Circe has started to make materials π§πͺ
June 2024, Welcome Josh, Tommy, and Zoe, high school students from the Young Scholars Program, joining us for summer research. They will be participating in lab automation and materials synthesis projects.Β
May 2024, Welcome Kayla to the Zeng group!
April 2024, Dr. Zeng was selected as a Scialog Fellow on Automating Chemical Laboratories. She attended the conference in Tucson.Β
March 2024, Dr. Zeng gave invited talks at the ACS Spring Meetings, Cornell MSE departmental seminar, and the ACerS-MRS Virtual Workshop.
March 2024, Elena, Ajay, and Emily synthesized their first samples π§ͺ
March 2024, Our first robot arm is set to run π€
Feb. 2024, Welcome Emily to the Zeng group!
Jan. 2024, Welcome Elena, Ajay, and Yufang, to the Zeng group!
Jan. 2024, Dr. Zeng started as an Assistant Professor at Florida State University
Openings: The Zeng group has Ph.D. and postdoctoral positions available. Interested in joining us?Β
Send emails to Dr. Zeng for more information (zeng@chem.fsu.edu).
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