Yaoli Zhao
The 2023 winner of the ECS Sensor Division Student Research Award is Yaoli Zhao of the University of Buffalo for her contributions to developing a new method for standoff and point detection of chemicals by combining photothermal and photoacoustic effects with microfabricated cantilever beams to simultaneously achieve very high molecular selectivity and very high sensitivity. She will be recognized at the 245th ECS Meeting in San Francisco, CA, and deliver her award talk there.
Yaoli Zhao is a PhD student working in Thomas Thundat’s University at Buffalo lab, specializing in the field of chemical detection. Her current research focuses on developing innovative standoff detection sensors, specifically for plastic classification. Zhao successfully developed techniques and demonstrated methods for molecular identification of plastics, which resulted in the publication of multiple research papers in refereed journals including one as a corresponding author in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. (more…)