peers--Xu shared with Mannan Mehta of Lehigh's Brown & White that he will use the two-year, $75,000 fellowship to "study the formation of aerosols, referring to submicron particles [such as tailpipe emissions]." His research involves a family of techniques called nanospectroscopy and their use in trying to understand how molecules respond to light at the nanoscale level. Xu is developing techniques to bypass the diffraction limit and will use the award, in part, to purchase an aerosol collector that will enable him and his group to use the technique they developed to study the particles' composition and how different chemicals organize to form the particles. Chemistry Department Chair, Greg Ferguson, noted in a Lehigh News interview that Xu is "both a thinker and a doer, conceiving creative solutions to challenging scientific and pedagogical problems and then successfully implementing them." This is not the first recognition Xu has received for his outstanding research work. He was named one of only ten Beckman Young Investigators awarded in 2018 which came with a prestigious grant from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation for "the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences." He also received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in 2019. College of Arts & Sciences Dean, Dr. Bob Flowers, stated, "Professor Xu is an extraordinary scholar, mentor and teacher, and this recognition by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an acknowledgement of his current work and promise as a future leader in the development of methods and instruments for measurement and imaging at the nanoscale . . . is important recognition of Professor Xu's scholarly contributions and demonstrates the high quality of research being performed at Lehigh. Xu Named a 2020 Sloan Research Fellow Department of Chemistry · Page 5 The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation recognized Dr. Xiaoji Xu as being among "the most promising scientific researchers working today" when it awarded him a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship on February 12, 2020. One of only 23 chemistry recipients across the U.S. and Canada--and nominated for the award by his In Mehta's discussion with Xu, he attributed his success to "having not been afraid to try new things . . . In this case I feel myself to be very lucky. I had several ideas and when I tried them, almost half of them worked. I was able to bring something new to my research." He notes that getting recognition such as this invigorates research, "When you do research, there's a technical aspect and a confidence aspect. [This gives] a boost to the confidence aspect. . . I am more willing to take scientific risk, conduct high-risk/high reward experiments."
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