Sheng Dai, ORNL corporate fellow and section head for separations and polymer chemistry in the Physical Sciences Directorate, was selected to deliver the Fray Lecture by the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Molten Salts and Ionic Liquids Discussion Group, or MSILDG.
The lecture honors “individuals who have made outstanding contributions to molten salt and ionic liquids research,” according to the MSILDG. It is named after noted materials researcher and Cambridge University professor Derek Fray.
“This is a well-deserved honor for Sheng, given his record of scientific achievement over nearly three decades at ORNL,” said Roger Rousseau, director of the Chemical Sciences Division. “The lab’s molten salt research program is globally recognized, and Sheng has been central to much of that research.”
Dai delivered the Fray Lecture, in which he discussed advances in the emerging field of nanoporous ionic liquids and molten salts, August 20 at the MSILDG Summer Research Meeting at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom.
Dai joined ORNL in 1990 as a postdoc performing research in high-temperature chemistry. In the ensuing decades he worked his way up to section head and was named a corporate fellow in 2011. His current research focuses on ionic liquids, molten salts and porous materials, including their applications for separation sciences and energy storage as well as catalysis by nanomaterials.
Dai is also a professor of chemistry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is a fellow of the Materials Research Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
