Molecular Self-Assembly: Advances and Applications

Alex D. Q. Li received his BS in polymer chemistry at Jilin University, China, his MS and Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. After graduation, he was honored with a postdoctoral director fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he later became a technical staff member. At Los Alamos, he led a research group working on chemistry of materials and microsensors for volatile organic compounds, which received R&D 100 award in 1995. Inspired by teaching and innovative research, Dr. Li joined the faculty at Washington State University (WSU) in 2000, where he initiated his research on foldamers and later received the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator award. His research areas include macromolecular design and engineering, advanced materials synthesis, bionanotechnology, self-assembly, and supramolecular systems. The philosophy in his group is to use novel methods to construct advanced materials, with an emphasis on molecular design and innovative approaches to demonstrate new concepts, principles, and applications in the chemical, physical, and biological sciences.