Program Director Alec Wodtke

UC Santa Barbara has been awarded $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a pioneering research and education partnership with China in chemistry, physics, materials science, and chemical engineering.

The NSF funds will support the first three years of a planned five-year program that emphasizes graduate education in the above areas. The new UCSB program, which will be coordinated by the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, was one of only 12 proposals to win NSF support of the170 reviewed. It also is the only U.S.-China partnership to be funded by the agency.

“Students will emerge from the program with technical skills and the ability to think and work independently in the field,” said Alec Wodtke, professor and chair of chemistry and biochemistry, and director of the program. “They also will have developed personal and professional networks overseas and experience in technology transfer. We firmly believe that the people emerging from this program will be future leaders in academe and in industry.”

Said Chancellor Henry T. Yang: “This is an exciting and innovative project, and I am extremely proud of our creative colleagues who had the vision to develop this program, and very grateful to the National Science Foundation for recognizing it with this pioneering grant.”

The UCSB project is formally called the Partnership for International Research and Education in Electron Chemistry and Catalysis at Interfaces, or PIRE-ECCI. It will bring together seven top UCSB scientists with seven of their counterparts from a leading institution in the People’s Republic of China to jointly mentor a select group of P7h.D. students at UCSB. The Chinese partner, the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is considered China’s top institution for the study of catalysis and chemical reaction dynamics.

To launch the new program, UCSB will present an all-day workshop on Thursday, Dec. 8, in Engineering Sciences Building 1001 to introduce PIRE-ECCI and to begin to explore some scientific frontiers at which participants in the program will work. Speakers will include leading scientists and university officials from China as well as UCSB. Among them will be Martin Moskovits, UCSB dean of science.

“China has become a major international player in science and technology,” said Dean Moskovits. “There is so much that we can learn from each other.”

A major part of the research and education plan involves support for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at UCSB and the Dalian Institute to pursue collaborative research in chemistry. Faculty members of the team represent diverse scientific viewpoints, from surface chemical dynamics, to theoretical simulations of surface chemistry, to engineering applications of catalysis.

UCSB students in the program will go to China in one or more different ways: extended research stays in Dalian of from three to six months, twice yearly workshops where students will present their research, and special technology-transfer study tours of China. On those 7- to 10-day study tours, students will visit corporate research facilities in China and become acquainted with the business environment there.

The extended research visits will include Chinese language and cultural sensitivity training for UCSB participants, with reciprocal support given to Chinese participants coming to UCSB. At least six UCSB graduate students will take part in the program, and China is expected to sponsor an equal number of students for its part.

In addition to Wodtke, the program’s leadership includes Susannah Scott, a professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at UCSB, and Xueming Yang, a professor of chemistry at the University for Science and Technology of China and assistant director of basic research at the Dalian institute.