Jingshan Du winner of the 2020 IIN Outstanding Research Award

Jingshan Du is co-advised by Professor Chad A. Mirkin and Professor Vinayak P. Dravid and is currently working on complex nanoparticle systems, multimodal imaging for soft/hard interfaces, and nanoscale thermodynamics. He utilizes surface patterning tools to create physically confined nanoreactors and synthesize libraries of complex nanoparticles with positionally encoded size and composition. By systematically studying these structures and their structure-function relationships, new insights ae obtained and will eventually facilitate the design of functional and stable complex nanoparticles of industrial interest. He further studies the structures of nanoparticle assemblies linked by DNA and reveals a new type of colloidal crystal that is structurally analogous to metals.