Materials that we completely understand at the visual macroscale are often completely different when we look at them on the scale of nanometers. Typical behaviors, such as but not limited to electrical, optical, and magnetic phenomena, are often unrecognizably distinctive within a nanomaterial. Therefore, it is an opportune time to discover and gather as much information and observations about these interesting and exciting materials created at the nanoscale. Dr. Stanislaus Wong, of the State University of New York and Brookhaven National Lab, works to innovate and develop themes and trends that impact nanoscience. Through his work, Dr. Wong believes he can “create something enduring and lasting, something positive and constructive, that might possibly transcend the vagaries of time.” By methodically making and systematically studying the properties of novel nanomaterials, he and his team are building up the foundation and intellectual underpinnings of nanoscience itself. As an academic lab, focused on basic research, Dr. Wong and his team also have contributed to the development of unique and distinctive materials, what Dr. Wong coins their “toolkit,” that can be applied to useful commercialized products for future practical applications.

Through Dr. Wong’s strategy of focusing on creating new types and classes of nanomaterials through rational and thoughtful chemistry, he and his lab hope to tailor properties of any material that they can fabricate and synthesize, giving them an unprecedented potential to design and introduce particularly desirable functions and properties. Therefore, by understanding the underlying chemical process and efficiently characterizing the products of that process, the impact of these nanomaterials may be revolutionary. In this sense, Dr. Wong’s research has the potential to impact the progress of many disparate fields ranging from biology, chemistry, physics, to engineering. Moreover, because Dr. Wong’s research is vertically integrated, his group members are able to take ownership over a project from the initial synthesis to its eventual structural and property characterization. Thus, with the combination of passion, technical expertise, and incredible collaboration that links diverse fields, Dr. Wong’s quest seeks to create consequential innovation that will allow for longer, healthier, and more fulfilling lives!

Current research includes:

• Designing Materials: Dr. Wong is interested in how to fundamentally design a material that has a very specific set of properties. He and his team work to tune and integrate desirable properties into new materials. That is, in theory, he and his team are able to deliberately design better and higher performing components for a host of wide-ranging, potential applications including but not limited to solar cells, fuel cells, energy storage, catalysts, nano-medical instrumentation, gas storage media, and molecular wires for the next generation of electronics devices.

• Designing Devices: Dr. Wong’s lab works to design specific devices that endow new and interesting nanomaterials with unique combinations of properties and functionalities, that have never before been combined into one discrete unit. For example, his research has led to the development of nanoscale platforms for drug delivery inside cancer cells that leaves healthy cells unscathed. Additional projects relying upon the same principles are unlimited in potential.

• Sustainable Chemistry: Dr Wong’s lab consciously works towards green, sustainable chemistry through the deliberate effort to abide by guidelines that are generally atom economical and benign to the human health and environment in their synthesis of functional nanostructures.