August 14, 2023
Duan honored with young investigator award from electrochemical society
Chuancheng Duan, assistant professor in the Tim Taylor Department of Chemical Engineering, was recently selected as the winner of the 2023 High-Temperature Energy, Materials, & Processes Division J. Bruce Wagner, Jr. Young Investigator Award by the Electrochemical Society.
Duan will be formally recognized and have the opportunity to speak at the organization’s biannual meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, in October. The award itself was created in 1998 to recognize a young member of the organization who has demonstrated exceptional promise for a successful career in the field of high-temperature energy, materials and processes.
“I want to thank the Electrochemical Society for selecting me for this prestigious award," Duan said. "This type of recognition reflects the groundbreaking work being done every day by my team in the Materials Research Laboratory for Sustainable Energy.”
Duan's research focuses on designing, fabricating, and characterizing advanced energy materials and novel electrochemical devices to address critical energy and environmental issues. The research has lead to major breakthroughs in the scientific understanding and practical application of proton-conducting ceramics for intermediate-temperature electrochemical devices including fuel cells, electrolyzers and electrofuels synthesis. He has also devoted extensive efforts to collaborating with industries to facilitate the scaleup and commercialization of electrochemical devices for power generation, hydrogen production, chemical energy storage and chemical synthesis.
Since his arrival at K-State in 2020, Duan has been awarded more than $5.5 million in research funding from a variety of organizations and industry partners, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA. Over the last year, he has secured more than $1.7 million in DOE funding to study devices that can increase efficiency or create new, high-value chemicals as part of emissions reduction in large, industrial engines.