Principal Investigator

Dr. Qing Shao,PhD (qshao@uky.edu)
2018- Assistant professor, Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Kentucky
2014-2018 Postdoctoral research scholar, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University
2009-2014 Research Assistant, Chemical Engineering Department, University of Washington
Postdoctoral Research Scholar
Dr. Qiao Qi
Dr. Qiao Qi joined the Shao group in August 2020. She got her PhD degree at the University of Oklahoma in 2020. Her thesis is about the reactive molecular dynamics simulations of biomass. She will conduct research to understand and design deep eutectic solvents using molecular simulations and machine learning methods.
Graduate Students

Nguyen, Manh Tien
Tien had a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from HCM University of Technology – National University in 2014. He has started his PhD journey majoring in Chemical Engineering at the University of Kentucky since 08/2018. Tien joined the Shao group in fall 2018. His research focuses on soft materials for energy applications.

Usman Abbas Lame
Usman joined the group in December. He is investigating the mechanisms that govern the application of deep eutectic solvents using computational approaches

Anthony O. Ramirez (Co-advised with Dr. Pharm)
Anthony is a Materials Science and Engineering PhD student at the University of Kentucky, with a bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Merced. He joined the Shao group in February 2020, where he is now researching the properties of soft matter interfaces using computational techniques. He is also jointly working with the Soft Materials and Interfaces Lab with Dr. Pham.
Undergraduate Researchers

Ji Xiaorong
Xiaorong is a 2nd-year undergraduate student in the chemical and materials engineering department at the University of Kentucky. She is investigating how the molecular structure of zwitterionic motifs influence their charge distributions using quantum mechanical calculations.
Tapia, Joseph
Joseph is a third-year chemical engineering major at the University of Kentucky. He started in January 2020. He will explore the application of machine-learning methods in materials discovery
Former group members
Xu Nan (visiting student, Zhejiang University)
Shearer, Hunter W. (undergraduate)
Braide, Tamunoemi Opaki (undergraduate)