Nanomaterials Scientist Yu Huang Appointed Traugott and Dorothea Frederking Endowed Chair

The UCLA Samueli School of Engineering has named Yu Huang, a professor and chair of the Materials Science and Engineering Department, as the inaugural holder of the Traugott and Dorothea Frederking Endowed Chair, effective retroactively July 1, 2022.

Huang was selected for her work in enhancing the mechanistic understanding of nanoscale phenomena to address green energy applications in catalysis, fuel cells and materials synthesis. Leveraging the distinctive roles of nanoscale surfaces and interfaces, Huang is creating methodologies to apply the latest developments in a wide range of materials and technologies. 

Among her numerous national and international awards and recognition, Huang is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Materials Research Society. She is also a recipient of the International Society of Electrochemistry Prize for Experimental Electrochemistry, the International Precious Metal Institute Carol Tyler Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, a National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award and a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award. For the past five consecutive years, Huang has been named a highly cited researcher by Clarivate. The annual listing recognizes the world’s most influential researchers as determined by authored studies that rank in the top 1% in the number of scholarly citations worldwide.

Huang received a B.S. in chemistry from University of Science and Technology of China, and both an M.A in chemistry and Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Harvard University.

Before joining the UCLA faculty in 2005, Huang was a Lawrence Fellow and held a joint postdoctoral position at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has served as the chair of the Materials Science and Engineering Department since July 2021.

The Traugott and Dorothea Frederking Endowed Chair was established in 2012 through a gift from Dorothea Frederking in memory of her husband Traugott who died in 2001. The gift built upon a research fund originally endowed by the couple in 1998, which was then converted to the endowed chair after Traugott’s passing. An expert in cryogenics, Traugott Frederking joined the UCLA faculty in the early 1960s and taught for decades until his retirement in 1999. Dorothea Frederking died in 2019.