We are delighted to welcome a new Community Board member to Materials Horizons – join us in welcoming Weilai Yu to the journal!!

The Materials Horizons Community Board is made up of early career researchers, such as PhD students and postdocs, that are fundamental in the future development of the materials field.

We are pleased to welcome Weilai Yu to this outstanding group of early career researchers. 

Weilai Yu, Stanford University, USA

ORCID: 0000-0002-9420-0702

Dr. Weilai Yu is currently a postdoc scholar of Chemical Engineering at Stanford working with Prof. Zhenan Bao. In 2021, he obtained his Ph.D in Chemistry at Caltech working with Prof. Nathan S. Lewis. His research interests include solar fuels, electrochemistry, Li battery and materials interface.

Connect with Weilai on Twitter: @yuweilai93 

Check out Weilai’s most recent publications in the Royal Society of Chemistry:

Catalytic open-circuit passivation by thin metal oxide films of p-Si anodes in aqueous alkaline electrolytes
Harold J. Fu, Pakpoom Buabthong, Zachary Philip Ifkovits, Weilai Yu, Bruce S. Brunschwig and Nathan S. Lewis
Energy Environ. Sci., 2022,15, 334-345, DOI: 10.1039/D1EE03040J

Investigations of the stability of etched or platinized p-InP(100) photocathodes for solar-driven hydrogen evolution in acidic or alkaline aqueous electrolytes
Weilai Yu,  Matthias H. Richter,  Pakpoom Buabthong, Ivan A. Moreno-Hernandez, Carlos G. Read, Ethan Simonoff, Bruce S. Brunschwig and Nathan S. Lewis
Energy Environ. Sci., 2021,14, 6007-6020, DOI: 10.1039/D1EE02809J

Investigations of the stability of GaAs for photoelectrochemical H2 evolution in acidic or alkaline aqueous electrolytes
Weilai Yu, Matthias H. Richter, Ethan Simonoff, Bruce S. Brunschwig and Nathan S. Lewis
J. Mater. Chem. A, 2021,9, 22958-22972, DOI: 10.1039/D1TA04145B

General information

The purpose of the Community Board for both Materials Horizons and Nanoscale Horizons is to provide a channel for communication between the materials and nanoscience student and early career researcher community and the journals’ Executive Editor and Editorial Boards, and also to facilitate student and postdoctoral (or equivalent) engagement with Materials Horizons and Nanoscale Horizons. We are looking for engaged and interested early career researchers who will see this as an opportunity to assist in the development of an innovative journal, from a learned society publisher, in rapidly expanding areas of science. We are inviting nominations for both journals at this time, please do feel free to state a preference of journal in your nomination, however this is not mandatory and each nomination will be assessed for suitability for both Materials Horizons and Nanoscale Horizons Community Boards.

Guidelines for Nominators

We are inviting nominations for both journals at this time, please do feel free to state a preference of journal in your nomination, however this is not mandatory and each nomination will be assessed for suitability for both Materials Horizons and Nanoscale Horizons Community Boards.

• Any Principle Investigator can nominate someone for the Community Board of either Materials Horizons or Nanoscale Horizons. Candidates must not nominate themselves.
• Nominations are open to PhD candidates and active researchers who received their PhD (or equivalent degree, if applicable) no more than eight years prior to 1 November 2019. Appropriate consideration will be given to candidates from all research backgrounds (academic or industrial) and to those who have taken a career break or followed a different study path.

To make a nomination please provide the information outlined below to materialshorizons-rsc@rsc.org.

• The nominator’s name, affiliation, position and contact details
• The candidate’s name, affiliation, research group, position and contact details
• A supporting statement from the nominator (no more than 750 words) addressing the selection criteria (see below)
• A short personal statement from the candidate describing what they will bring to the role in terms of advising and being an advocate for the journal. This must be no longer than 250 words.
• An up-to-date CV for the candidate, including publication history (if any)

Selection criteria for Materials Horizons and Nanoscale Horizons Community Boards

The Executive Editor and members of the Editorial Boards will consider the following aspects of all nominations for the Community Boards as appropriate:

• Impact of research
• Quality of publications and/or patents and/or software
• Profile within institute and/or community
• Service to the community

Materials and Nanoscale Horizons Community Board_FAQs

The deadline for submission of nominations is 27th January, 2020.

For more information about the journal and for a list of current Community Board members, please visit the journal webpage at: rsc.li/materials-horizons

Last year, we launched the first early career researcher Board for Materials Horizons, the Community Board. Since then, these Board members have provided invaluable feedback regarding journal activities, as well as being ambassadors for the journal. Based on this success, we have expanded the Community Board, through requesting nominations from our Board members, as well as the wider academic community.

We are now delighted to announce the new and expanded Materials Horizons Community Board. Many of our original Board members from last year are continuing to serve for a second term, and now the Board consists of an international set of 33 researchers at different stages of their early careers, ranging from PhD candidates to Associate Professors.

Read more about our Board members below. We have also introduced the Nanoscale Horizons Community Board, find out more here.

Sarit Agasti
	Sarit received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Calcutta, in 2003 and then his Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2005. Sarit went on to receive his PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst under the supervision of Professor Vincent M. Rotello. Since his PhD, he has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at both the Massachusetts General hospital-Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University working with Professor Ralph Weissleder and Professor Peng Yin, respectively. Sarit has now returned to India and is working as a Faculty fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. His lab is interested in engineering small molecules and programmable molecular materials to address challenges in bioimaging, specifically in super-resolution microscopy.
Athina Anastasaki
	Athina received her Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She then undertook a PhD in Polymer Chemistry at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Professor David Haddleton. She then undertook the position of a Monash-Warwick Alliance Research Fellow in the research groups of Professor David Haddleton and Professor Thomas Davis, focusing on controlled living radical polymerization methods, mechanistic studies, photochemistry and sequence-controlled polymers. Currently, she is an Elings Fellow working alongside Professor Hawker at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
Maartje Bastings
	Maartje Bastings studied Biomedical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and graduated Cum Laude in the group of Prof. E. W. (Bert) Meijer, where she continued her Ph.D. program funded by a Toptalent Fellowship from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO). Her research focused on the understanding of multivalent binding mechanisms for directed targeting and the development of supramolecular biomaterials. She was awarded the University Academic Award in 2013 for best Ph.D. thesis at the TU/e. She moved to the Wyss Institute of Harvard University in Boston as a NWO Rubicon and Human Frontier Science Program postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Prof. William M. Shih. She studies DNA as a programmable biomaterial to design immune responses and assemble into multimodal nanoparticles. In January 2017 she will start as tenure track Assistant Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at EPFL, Switzerland.
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