8/28/2024 Jackson Brunner
Written by Jackson Brunner
Focused on Polymers
Assistant Professor Yuecheng (Peter) Zhou remembers his first day at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign like it was yesterday.
“The first course I had was an introduction to materials science,” Zhou said. “I remember a class activity using jelly candies and wood toothpicks to make crystal structures of materials.”
Zhou, the newest faculty member within The Grainger College of Engineering’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was always fascinated by the materials at the foundation of both the natural world and man-made products. He knew when he arrived at Illinois that he wanted to study polymers, having sensed the potential for innovations such materials could lead to.
“I think about these plastics and tires in our daily life. It’s all made of polymers,” he said. “I just wanted to learn more about the cutting edge in this field.”
Armed with the knowledge of where he wanted to focus his studies, Zhou began his climb up the academic ladder in materials science. He first completed a bachelor’s degree with high honors in 2014, then continued toward a Ph.D., which he also pursued in Urbana-Champaign.
Polymeric materials remained the focus when Zhou’s Ph.D. research began, specifically digging into the fundamental side of materials science. He knew studying the dynamics of polymer chains at the molecular level could help provide a better understanding of polymeric materials and thus lead to better real-world products. Leveraging single-molecule imaging techniques, he examined the dynamics of polymers under non-equilibrium conditions over his five years of doctoral research.
His thesis focused on single-molecule studies of polymers and self-assembly materials. This included molecular examinations of polymers with different chain topologies under different concentration regimes. The research also entered a new territory as he examined the self-assembly behavior of biohybrid materials, which feature the combination of biological and engineered components, with the goal of designing future biohybrid semiconducting materials.
Zhou headed to Stanford University for postdoctoral research after completing his Ph.D. in 2019. This step marked a major change for Zhou as he began exploring ways to translate his materials science background to the field of biology.
“The goal was to develop materials and optical detection techniques to understand the electrical signals inside of our brain and heart,” he explained. “So, you could see that’s actually quite a big jump, going from the field of polymer science into the field of bioelectronics and optical sensing.”
Illinois Homecoming
Upon finishing his postdoctoral work in 2024, Zhou was confident in where he wanted to be next. He knew as far back as his underclassman years that an academic career track was something he would strongly consider.
When the opportunity to join the Materials Science and Engineering faculty at Illinois presented itself, he jumped on it. Sitting in his pristine office inside of the Materials Science and Engineering Building, he couldn’t stop smiling when asked about what the opportunity meant when he received the offer.
“I can’t imagine a more exciting thing than going back and being a faculty member in my home department,” he said with a smile.
It makes sense why Zhou would call Illinois home. Given that he completed most of his academic journey here, there was a sense of familiarity and comfort in returning to his campus colleagues – people who taught him and worked with him on research. Zhou feels he’s in an environment that thrives on collaboration.
“I can just knock on my colleague’s door and talk about science,” he said.
It’s important to know where the resources are, but Zhou said he also enjoys the peace and quiet he can easily find around campus. Whether he’s taking a walk along Green Street or poring over books in a library, he’s in a place that will help him think and keep him in a relaxed state of mind.
Striving for Impact
Zhou knows what he plans to do with his research now that he’s situated on campus. His work, set to build on his postdoctoral studies, will be at the interface of materials science, optical detection and neural engineering, related to how the human brain and heart function.
“We will develop polymeric materials coupled with ultra-sensitive optical detection techniques to understand the electrical signals in the human brain and heart, as well as the biochemical reactions in our brain and heart,” Zhou said.
In going down this road, Zhou is thinking about brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and heart diseases, like arryhthmia. When it comes to brain disease, Zhou seeks to understand the malfunctioning neurons that relate to the development of these health issues in people. He hopes this work into neural electrophysiology can help push toward finding treatments. When it comes to heart disease, understanding electrical signals in the heart can help screen drugs to cure those problems.
Further, Zhou also wants to conduct research that helps scientists build better bioelectronics.
“What we are hoping to do is go down to the single-cell and molecular level to understand biointerfaces – how cells interact with materials – so that we can design materials to interface with different biological systems,” Zhou said.
Zhou plans to hire two graduate students to help him with his research goals at the start of the fall 2024 semester. The chance to work with those students is just one of several opportunities for him to help educate people – something that was critically important to him when he accepted the job and returned to the U of I.
He plans to teach polymer chemistry in his first semester as an instructor and might explore teaching biomaterials courses in future years.
“Because of the great faculty members in this department, I learned a lot,” Zhou said. “Now that I’m a faculty member, I want to pass down this great tradition of educating the next generation of materials scientists.”
He doesn’t want to limit the education of young people to the classroom. Community outreach is an important goal for Zhou. He’s interested in programs, whether he builds them or participates in existing ones, that help young students find an interest in science.
“We want them to get early exposure to science so we can have more of a diverse population in STEM education, especially in materials science,” he added.
One thing is certain: Zhou’s own brain and heart were clearly in the right place when he made the decision to come back home to Illinois.