Liu receives NSF CAREER Award

Dr. Jun Liu, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University, has received a Faculty Early Career Development award, also known as the CAREER Award, from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award is one of the highest honors given by NSF to young faculty members in science and engineering.

NSF will provide $518,775 in funding over five years to support his project, “Pushing the Lower Limit of Thermal Conductivity in Layered Materials.”

The goal of Liu’s project is to understand how to suppress vibrational energy transport in anisotropic layered materials by disorder. A focus will be made on a model transition metal dichalcogenide crystal, using complementary state-of-the-art theoretical and experimental approaches. Liu is hoping the success of this project will enable the first set of experimental and theoretical studies to elucidate the roles of interlayer spacing and bonding environment on suppressing vibrational energy transport, thereby advancing the current understanding on the microscopic thermal transport mechanisms in anisotropic disordered, layered materials.

Liu received his B.S. in energy and power engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from University of Colorado at Boulder.