Sloan Fellowship Award
The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) named two prominent faculty members 2026 Sloan Research Fellows, one of the most competitive and prestigious honors for early-career scientists in the US and Canada. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation picked 126 excellent researchers for their “outstanding promise” by hand, including Peter Maurer, Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering, and Chibueze Amanchukwu, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering.
The Sloan Research Fellowship is a two-year, $75,000 prize intended to help young faculty members who are the future of scientific leadership with their creative research. Unlike other federal awards, this financing gives the UChicago PME grantees a degree of flexibility that enables them to conduct high-risk, high-reward research. According to Maurer, his team is allowed to “try some of our crazier ideas and see where they go” because these fellowships are less expensive.
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Bridging Quantum Physics and Living Systems
At the nexus of biophotonics and quantum engineering, Peter Maurer’s work holds a special place. The goal of his lab is to create new quantum sensors that can analyze biological systems more precisely than can be done with existing technology. The two main, complementary goals of Maurer’s work are to construct these sensors to monitor particular molecular-scale biological activities and to examine the basic constraints of quantum systems in “noisy” biological contexts.
The objective is to incorporate the precision of quantum physics into the innate complexity of biological things, according to Maurer. According to him, his group is employing quantum effects as a way to “become part of biology” rather than just as a means of observing it. This method works especially well since life operates at the molecular length scale, where signals are within the ideal range for quantum sensors but frequently too small for traditional detection.
Quantum sensors can identify subtle characteristics like nuclear spin density, in contrast to conventional fluorescent labels, which typically merely show a molecule’s location. These measurements are essential for comprehending how ions move through cellular channels and how protein conformational alterations occur. The first protein-based qubit was demonstrated, marking a significant milestone for Maurer’s lab and one of the top ten physics breakthroughs of 2025, according to Physics World. Maurer plans to use the Sloan Fellowship to scale these biological qubits into bigger quantum arrays, taking use of biology’s innate ability to arrange matter with atomic accuracy, which is much more challenging to achieve with traditional quantum platforms.
Maurer completed his doctoral studies in physics at Harvard University, where he made groundbreaking contributions to the field of quantum control of room-temperature qubits. Additionally, under the guidance of Nobel laureate Steven Chu, he finished a postdoctoral program at Stanford University.
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Revolutionizing Energy Storage and Sustainability
The main focus of Chibueze Amanchukwu’s study is the crucial issues of the clean energy transition, particularly how electrolytes the materials that allow electrical charge to flow in batteries determine chemical processes during energy conversion and storage. Considerable progress has already been made in his lab, including the creation of a new “carbon and salt” battery. Compared to the leading lithium-ion batteries on the market, this new battery technology is intended to be safer, more affordable, and abundant on Earth.
Beyond hardware innovation, Amanchukwu’s group uses machine learning algorithms to forecast different electrolyte performance and create novel formulations for energy systems of the future. At the “intersection of different fields,” Amanchukwu applies battery research techniques for electrolyte design to other urgent environmental problems. The degradation of “forever chemicals,” or PFAS (per-and-poly fluoroalkyl compounds), and improving the effectiveness of electrochemical carbon dioxide collection and conversion are two examples of this.
With the Sloan Fellowship, Amanchukwu intends to concentrate on the contact between the electrode and electrolyte. Through the creation of reliable, high-resolution battery sensing technologies, he intends to give scientists previously unheard-of insights into the chemical processes involved in cycles of charging and discharging. These sensors, in his opinion, will be “transformational,” directing the creation of new materials and illuminating intricate chemical pathways.
MIT awarded Amanchukwu a PhD in chemical engineering, and he has a joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory. Postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University and the University of Cambridge are among his previous experiences. Among the many honors he has received are the 2024 “Innovators Under 35” list from MIT Technology Review and the “Talented 12” list from Chemical & Engineering News.
A Legacy of Excellence at UChicago PME
At the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, the appointment of Maurer and Amanchukwu carries on the longstanding history of Sloan Research Fellows. Their names join those of Matthew Tirrell, Chong Liu, Hannes Bernien, Margaret Gardel, Liang Jiang, Aashish Clerk, Greg Engel, Aaron Esser-Kahn, Jiwoong Park, and Dmitri Talapin, among other distinguished alumni who have received this honors. Continued recognition highlights the institution’s leadership in quantum science, sustainability, and biological engineering research.
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