Jian Luo
University of California-San Diego, CA·Materials Science
Many modern materials are valued because one property responds to another. For example, some solids change shape when a voltage is applied, and some expand when they are heated.
- Fields
Materials Science
Engineering
Chemistry
- Topics
compositionally complex oxides
high-entropy oxides
electrostriction
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2031
What they work on
- Discover lead-free compositionally complex oxides, which mix several metal ions, with unusually large electrostriction, linking first-principles calculations, tensorial cluster expansion and physics-informed machine learning with experiments.
- Prepare compositionally controlled CCO samples, starting with fluorite oxides, by high-throughput high-energy ball milling and sintering into dense specimens, to test computational predictions.
- Design and genetically engineer biomolecules, guided by first-principles and AI computational chemistry, that control silicate dissolution and repolymerization in silicon-rich wastes.
- Develop mild biological and bioinspired routes to recover critical minerals and rare earth elements from concrete, slag and glass waste and to make value-added silicon materials.
More about the research
These two projects aim to design such materials in new ways. One combines computing and experiments to find lead-free oxides that deform strongly under electric fields. The other borrows tricks from living organisms to turn silicon-rich industrial waste into useful materials and recovered minerals. Both look for better materials made with less environmental cost.
Why it matters
Lead-free materials that change shape under voltage could replace lead-based parts in medical ultrasound, sensors, actuators and energy harvesters. Bio-inspired silicon processing could help turn the more than a billion tons of concrete, slag and glass waste produced each year into useful materials. It could also lower energy and chemical use and strengthen domestic supplies of critical minerals and rare earth elements.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Collaborative Research: GCR: Bioengineered Approaches to Recover Critical Minerals and Produce Sustainable Silicon-Based Materials from Silicon-Rich Wastes
NSF · Sep 2026 – Aug 2031
Collaborative Research: DMREF: Anharmonicity and Defect Engineering of Compositionally Complex Oxides for Anomalous Coupling Properties
NSF · Oct 2026 – Sep 2030
Closest labs
Xijin Zhang
George Mason University, VA·Engineering
Design biomolecules that control how silicate minerals dissolve and re-form, using first-principles and AI-guided computational chemistry, then synthesize and genetically engineer the selected molecules.
Johnpierre Paglione
University of Maryland, MD·Physics
Discover new High Entropy Quantum Materials using computational prediction and machine-learning-assisted searches within the AFLOW materials framework, combined with high-throughput synthesis.
Qi An
Iowa State University, IA·Materials Science
Build a closed-loop AI platform that compares Bayesian optimization (choosing the most informative next test) with deep reinforcement learning (trial-and-reward learning) for designing the high-entropy carbide (Ti-Zr-Hf-Nb-Ta)C, using machine-learning force-field atomistic simulations.
The school
University of California-San Diego: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 637 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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