On Sunday, May 21st, Dr. Michael Naguib will receive the Young Alumni Emerging Leader Award at the Drexel University Alumni Awards Ceremony. Each year the Drexel Alumni Board of Governors recognizes alumni who have gone above and beyond in their professions, the community, and within Drexel.
Michael joined Yury Gogotsi’s lab and Drexel Materials in Drexel Engineering in January 2010 and was co-advised by Prof Gogotsi and Prof Michel Barsoum. A lifetime achievement to most, at the start of Michael’s career he had a major scientific breakthrough in developing a completely new family of two-dimensional materials based on transition metal carbides and nitrides which the team labeled “MXenes”.
Michael found that MXenes had promise as useful materials for electrodes of lithium-ion batteries. Additionally, he contributed to his peers’ understanding of 2D carbides by discovering several previously unknown 2D carbides and other compounds.
Michael’s findings have been published in various high impact journals such as ACS Nano, Advanced Materials, Nature Communications, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and many others. He has been recognized with a number of awards for his work such as the 2013 Ross Coffin Purdy Award from the American Ceramic Society, the Graduate Excellence in Materials Science (GEMS) Award, and MRS Graduate Student Gold Award. He has been an excellent representative of Drexel University’s research efforts in the area of advanced energy storage materials and was also awarded with the “Great Promise to Enhance Drexel’s Reputation” title at his PhD graduation ceremony.
Michael has since continued his track record of success at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he has been awarded the prestigious Wigner Fellowship, which is given to no more than 2 researchers annually of the highest potential to become leaders in the energy field. He was also named as Drexel University’s “40 under 40” in 2016, another demonstration of his early and impactful successes. After starting his career at Tulane Michael received the NSF CAREER Award, Tulane Rising Star Award, Kroto Award, Robert L. Coble Award, Ten at Ten People Award from the Department of Energy, and the InfoMat Award from Wiley.
Michael is currently a tenured associate professor at Tulane University where his research group develops novel materials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion.
Congratulations, Michael, on this latest recognition! We can’t wait to celebrate you on Sunday and look forward to all of the great and innovative progress to come during your career!
