Zichao Rong is a 4th year Ph.D. student in Prof. Omar Yaghi's Group at the Department of Chemistry. Zichao received his B.S. in Materials Chemistry from Peking University, where he conducted research on developing new materials for electrocatalysts and battery electrodes.
Zichao's research focuses on accelerating the discovery of new reticular materials through the integration of high-throughput experimentation and machine learning. This work addresses fundamental challenges in reticular materials discovery, where scientists must navigate a vast chemical space while mastering reticular synthesis—a process requiring precise control to achieve crystallinity. His automated platform conducts synthesis and characterization with greater speed and precision than traditional methods. By utilizing both successful and failed experimental data, the ML models can recognize complex patterns in synthesis outcomes, leading to dozens of new reticular materials at accelerated discovery rates.
As a Kavli ENSI fellow, Zichao will expand the platform's capabilities with additional characterization tools for multi-modal analysis. He will develop universal descriptors for reaction data to create models that can transfer knowledge between different families of reticular materials. Furthermore, Zichao plans to prioritize the discovery of materials predicted to address pressing societal challenges, bridging the gap between materials discovery and practical applications.