The Yu Group has had a very exciting and productive year in 2016-2017. Professor Yan Yu was named a Sloan Fellow in Chemistry (among a total of twenty three nation-wide) by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Sloan fellowship recognizes the “most promising scientific researchers working today” in the U.S. and Canada. She also received the Trustee Teaching Award from Indiana University to recognize her dedication and innovation in undergraduate education. Graduate students in the Yu group have received multiple awards and fellowships to recognize their diligent work. Those include a travel award from the Biophysical Society and a President Diversity Dissertation Fellowship from Indiana University to Lucy Sanchez, an E. Campaigne C500 Introduction to Research Award from the Chemistry Department to Yanqi Yu, and a travel award from the College of Arts and Sciences to Yuan Gao.
The Yu group received a research grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, to spearhead a new research project designed to understand the physical mechanisms of microbial infections. Former undergraduate student, Mariah Chambers, who had done research in the Yu group for three years and graduated in 2016 has published her first-author paper in Soft Matter, a top journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Graduate students, Lucy Sanchez and Kwahun Lee, have also each published a first-author paper in top chemistry journals. Graduate students, Yuan Gao and Lucy Sanchez, and Professor Yan Yu gave multiple research presentations at the annual Biophysical Society Meeting in February 2017 and the National American Chemical Society Meeting in April 2017.