(6jc) Membrane Materials and Transport Studies for Sustainable Water, Energy and Life Sciences: From Fundamentals to Applications

Overcoming the emerging global scarcity of water, energy, and other natural resources (e.g., nutrients, metals, minerals, etc.) are grand challenges faced by humanity today. These critical resources are inextricably linked, and therefore, must be considered together as new materials and technologies are developed. Membrane-based and adsorption-based separation processes promise to provide efficient and economical separation solutions which are then applicable at large scale to sustainably address the water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus. Recent advances in controlled fabrication and characterization of materials across length scales allow for creative designs of functional nanocomposite membranes with predetermined chemistry/structure and unprecedented performance. Furthermore, they provide effective tools to unravel transport mechanisms of various molecules across interfaces and/or heterophasic structures. These understandings, coupled with advanced theory and simulations, establish foundational guidelines towards exploration, rationale designs and control fabrication of novel yet resilient membrane materials that could effectively be deployed at scale.

At the interface of chemical engineering, materials science, chemistry, and physics, my research interests lie in tackling the water–energy-environment nexus by seeking robust and cost-effective solutions with the integration of materials structure, surface chemistry, module geometry, process controls and transport modeling for water remediation, chemical separations and energy storage. At its core, I am deeply interested in building a research program based upon fundamental understandings of how molecules behave near dynamical interfaces in multicomponent fluidic systems across time- and length- scales. I will leverage the advanced characterization tools to study the correlations between nanostructures and chemistry with the transport properties of chemical species across materials interfaces which, in turn, offer opportunities for better predictive models and system designs with precise control to be proposed. Gathered knowledge will then be translated into deterministically innovating and implementing scalable and selective materials and sustainable methods for effective separations, toward a future of sufficient availability of resources, reduced pollution and maintained ecological balance.

To do this, I would like to unite the gathered knowledge from my master degree (on porous carbon nanofibers as supercapacitor electrode materials), my Ph.D. (at the University of Connecticut, on polymer-based membrane materials and transport studies for forward osmosis, advised by professor Jeffrey McCutcheon) and my postdocs (at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, on vertically-aligned carbon nanotube membranes and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, on porous nanomaterials and organic-inorganic composite membranes) as a toolkit in further exploring my directions. Based on the proposals that I have assembled, I foresee myself collaborating with other experimentalists, the simulation teams and industry.

Publications and Citations: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-9ArTS8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra

Email address: nbui@lbl.gov and/or ngoc.23tuut@gmail.com

Teaching Interests:

To me, teaching and learning are deeply intertwined and have been a vital part of my life. It started quite early, since elementary school, with my love for Maths and thirst for knowledge. In college, I spent 30% of my college time on tutoring high-school students on Maths-Chemistry-Physics and volunteering to teach village children during summer breaks. In the first two years of my PhD at the University of Connecticut, I was a teaching assistant for a few professors, spending most of the time grading students’ homework and exams. Observing those professors’ teaching methods and how students responded both in classes and through exams helped shape my perspectives on teaching. In the last two years of my PhD and at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, I was given opportunities to give a few guest lectures relating my research to both graduate and undergraduate students. I have found that teaching is an effective way to reinforce established understandings while broadening my knowledge through learning from colleagues and the critical inquiries of students. As a faculty member, I am interested in teaching core chemical engineering courses such as Fluid Mechanics, Transport Phenomena, Kinetics, Thermodynamics, Fundamentals of Engineering, and other specialized courses related to fundamentals of polymers, materials and chemistry. Besides courses that align with departmental needs, I would be delighted to develop elective courses in areas related to my research (e.g. transport phenomena, membrane separations, emerging technologies for sustainable water and energy, and so on).

Looking forward to my role as a professor, I’d like to apply what has been a vital part of my growing-up, what I have observed, learnt and practiced to help shape the future of the next generations. I strive to be a role model starting with the first crucial step: being fully aware of, honoring and cultivating the diversity surrounding us. Promoting equity, inclusion and diversity is one of the core principles that I strive to continuously foster throughout my professional career. I will reinforce existing diversity and outreach programs at my school with securing funds for mentoring underrepresented students, organizing inspirational workshops, connecting with teachers/faculties at middle-/high- schools, community colleges, and historically underrepresented schools to give talks to underrepresented students in local communities, joining K-12 STEM program, and organizing Open Lab Day frequently.