News

2024

  • March 2024 Matthew, Erika, and Kyle’s article on “Degradation of fenitrothion by a falling-film plasma reactor” was published online. This is their first article from our group. Congrats on your new milestone.

2023

  • August 2024 Priya Boora and Kyle Schuelke joined our group as 1st-year graduate students. Welcome!

2022

  • April 2022 Avinash successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Both!
  • June 2022 Trevor Laugen joined our group through the NSF REU summer program at the UNL Chemistry Department. Welcome!
  • July 2022 Avinash’s article on “Characterization of three-dimensional fractional viscoelastic models through complex modulus analysis and polar decomposition’ was published online. This is his 8th publication via our group. Congrats on your new milestone.

2020

  • April 2020 Tamra successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis. Way to go, Dr. Fisher!

2019

  • Mar 2019 Our paper “Structure–activity relationship of nanostructured ceria for the catalytic generation of hydroxyl radicals” was accepted by Nanoscale. Tamra Fisher is the leading author of this paper. Congratulations!
  • Apr 2019 Tamra received a student travel award to present her research at the Great Plains Catalysis Society Spring Meeting in Barlesville, Oklahoma at Philips 66 Research Center on April 12.
  • Apr 2019 Anuja successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis. Dr. Bhalkikar, your hard work paid off. Congrats!!!
  • Apr 2019 Tamra received the John Demuth Graduate Teaching Assistant Award for her contributions to the undergraduate teaching program at the UNL Department of Chemistry. Congrats!
  • Apr 2019 Stephen Yaghmour received an UCARE Award to support his research in plasma catalysis for the academic year 2019-2020. Stephen, we look forward to you joining our group in the 2019 Fall.
  • Jun 2019 Dr. Dan Stasko and Leo Derr joined our group through the professor-student pair summer program sponsored through the NSF-funded Nebraska Nanoscale Facilty. Welcome, Dan and Leo. They will stay with us during the 10 weeks summer session.
  • Jul 2019 Deepa Choudhry joined the UNL Chemistry Graduate Program. She started first graduate rotation in our group. Welcome.
  • Jul 2019 Avinash’s manuscript “Growth of carbon dioxide whiskers” was accepted by RSC Advances. Congrats!
  • Aug 2019 Leo was one of the poster competition winners at the 2019 UNL Summer Undergraduate Symposium. Congrats!

2018

  • Dec 2018 Chemistry in Pictures of C&EN featured the picture of orange-red colored “fiery cerium oxide” by Anuja on December 6.
  • Jun 2018 Our paper “Ozone-mediated synthesis of ceria nanoparticles” was accepted by Nanoscale. Anuja is the leading author of this paper. Congratulations!
  • Feb 2018 Dr. Cheung obtained the 2017-18 UNL Parents’ Recognition Award for providing support to students. The Parents’ Recognition Awards are presented annually to provide positive feedback to faculty and staff about their work with students. The recognition ceremony, which was organized by the Office of Student Affairs and co-sponsored by the Teaching Council and the Parents Association.

2017

  • Aug 2017 Rachel Tritt won the NSF REU travel award to attend an ACS meeting this coming year. Congratulations!
  • Apr 2017 Anuja Bhalkikar was awarded a Spring 2017 Citation for Excellence in Teaching Chemistry. Congrats!

2016

  • Oct 2016 Our paper “Method Development for Separating Organic Carbonates by Ion-moderated high-performance liquid chromatography” was accepted by Journal of Separation Science. Anuja is the leading author of this paper. Congratulations!
  • Aug 2016 Isaac Wells came back from his gap year trip and re-joined the Cheung group as an undergraduate researcher under the UCARE program. Welcome back!
  • Jun 2016 b. Avinash Both joined the Cheung group as a first year graduate student. Rebecca Grinnell from Georgetown College joined the group as a summer undergraduate research intern. Welcome!
  • Jun 2016 a. Our paper “Kinetic and mechanistic investigations of the direct synthesis of dimethyl carbonate from carbon dioxide over ceria nanorod catalysts” was accepted by Journal of Catalysis. Chris is the leading author of this paper. Congratulations!
  • Apr 2016 Chris successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis “Synthesis and Applications of Lanthanide Sulfides and Oxides”. Congratulations! Dr. Marin.

2015

  • Dec 2015 Yunyun started her post doc position at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in the Pittsburgh area. Keep in touch!
  • Oct 2015 Tamra presented her work on the microwave synthesis of nanoceria in the ACS Midwest Regional Meeting at the Missouri Western State University
  • Sep 2015 Our paper “Recyclable Magnetite Nanoparticle Catalyst for One-Pot Conversion of Cellobiose to 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural in Water” was accepted. Anuja is the leading author of this paper. Congratulations!
  • July 2015 Bin Wang joined our research group. He started working with Chris on a new catalysis project. Welcome!
  • June 2015 Two high school researchers, Yousif Ibrahim and Ben Steffenmeier, joined our group as interns this summer. Yousif was supported by the ACS Project SEED program. Ben was supported by an NCMN high school internship program. Ben was a summer intern last summer. He returned back to join our group again. Welcome!
  • May 2015 d. Yunyun won (a) James Carr Graduate Teaching Assistant Award and (b) Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Student Abroad. Congratulations!
  • May 2015 c. Our undergraduate researchers, Michael Kellar, James Doyle and John Burke graduated on May 8. Michael graduated with a BS. degree in Chemistry. James graduated with a B.S. degree in Physics. John graduated with a BS. degree in Chemical Engineering with highest distinction.
  • May 2015 b. Chris’s paper with Lu Wang and Dr. Wai-Ning Mei at UNO on the DFT computation of the electronic structures of lanthanide sulphides was accepted by AIMS Materials Science.
  • May 2015 a. Zane Gernhart started his job as an intellectual property manager at the NUTech. Yunyun stayed in the group as a research assistant.
  • April 2015 b. Congratulations to Yunyun. She was awarded the the James Carr Graduate Teaching Assistant Award. She also received the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Student Abroad.
  • April 2015 a. Yunyun and Zane successfully passed their Ph.D. thesis defenses. Congratulations!!

2014

  • Oct 2014. Zane’s paper on additive-free synthesis of cerium oxide nanorods was published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.
  • June 2014 c. Our group member, Zane Gernhart, started his summer internship as a commercialization analyst at the NUTech.
  • June 2014 b. Our undergraduate, Ivan Moreno-Herandez, started his graduate school training with Professor Nate Lewis at Caltech. Ivan’s first project involved solar science.
  • June 2014 a. Two new high school students, Katharen Hedges and Ben Steffenmeier, joined our group as interns this summer. Katharen was supported by the ACS Project SEED program. Ben was supported by an NCMN high school internship program. Welcome!
  • April 2014 b. Congratulations to Yunyun Zhou and Zane Gernhart for winning the UNL Chemistry Department awards. Yunyun won the Korean Alumni Graduate Research Assistant Award and Zane won the John J. Stezowski Graduate Teaching Assistant Award.
  • April 2014 a. Congratulations to our undergraduate researchers, Ivan Moreno-Herandez and John Burke. Ivan was admitted to Caltech for pursuing his graduate study. He also won a pre-doctoral NSF fellowship which would support his graduate study for 3 years. John was awarded the Milton E. Mohr Scholarship the second time. Our ex-undergraduate group member, Elizabeth Needels was admitted to the NYU College of Dentistry. She would join the dental school program in June of 2014.
  • January 2014 Our paper on “Influence of nanostructured ceria support on platinum nanoparticles for methanol electrooxidation in alkaline media” is published by RSC Adv. This is our first paper with our collaborator at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras.

2013

  • November 2013 Anuja successfully passed her Research Update Interview exam. Congratulations!
  • October 2013 Our paper on “Electronic structures and properties of lanthanide hexaboride nanowires” is published in J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B. This our first publication based on purely computational materials results. It results from a collaboration with two physics groups, one from the University of Nebrasa at Omaha and the other from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez.
  • September 2013 Our group member, Neil J. Lawrence, was invited to give a talk in the “American Chemical Society presidential symposium: Innovation and entrepreneurship” in the 2013 246th American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition in Indianapolis. His talk title was “Academic innovation to job creation in rare earth extraction and separation technology”
  • August 2013 Dr. Cheung will be on sabbatical leave from August to December in 2013.
  • June 2013 Our group successfully assisted our chemistry department to evaluate, purchase, and installed a CEM MAR6 laboratory microwave for undergraduate teaching laboratory courses at UNL. This microwave was first successfully utlized for an ester synthesis laboratory experiment in the summer 200-level organic lab courses at UNL.
  • May 2013 Our paper on “Resonant Photoemission Observations and DFT Study of s-d Hybridization in Catalytically Active Gold Clusters on Ceria Nanorods” is accepted by Angew. Chem. This is Yunyun’s first first-author paper published in this journal. Congratulations! Our paper on “Probing the bifunctional catalytic activity of ceria nanorods towards the cyanosilylation reaction” is also accepted by Catal. Sci. Technol.
  • April 2013 Congratulations to our undergraduate researchers: Kate Sonnenfeld, Ivan Moreno-Herandez and John Burke. Each of them receive $2,400 support from the UCARE program for their undergraduate research project in 2013-2014. John Burke is awarded the Milton E. Mohr Scholarship.
  • February 2013 Our paper on “Crystalline alpha-Sm2S3 nanowires: Structure and optical properties of an unusual intrinsically degenerate semiconductor” was accepted by Journal of Alloys and Compounds. Our paper with our collaborators at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on “High aspect ratio composite structures with 48.5% thermal neutron detection efficiency” was published in the Applied Physics Letters.

2012

  • September 2012 John Burke received the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AIES) Intel Scholarship. Congratulations!
  • August 2012 Our paper on “Existence of erbium hexaboride nanowire” was accepted by Journal of the American Ceramic Society.
  • July 2012 Graduate student, Anuja Bhalkikar, joined the Cheung group. Welcome!
  • June 2012 Dr. Dar started his assistant professor position at the King Saud Univeristy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Congratulations.
  • May 2012 Our former undergraduate researcher Bobby Jacobberger was awarded an NSF graduate fellowship during his first year as a graduate student at the Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison.
  • April 2012 Gonghua (Meso) Wang successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Wang! The UCARE program at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln awarded John Burke and Elizabeth Needels each with an undergraduate research grant of for the 2012-2013 academic year.
  • February 2012 Our paper on “Controlling E. coli adhesion of high-k dielectric bioceramics films using poly(amino acid) multilayers” was accepted by Langmuir.

2011

  • November 2011 Hsin-Yu Liu successfully defended his M.S. thesis. Congratulations.
  • September 2011 Our paper on “Phase stabilization in nitrogen-implanted nanocrystalline cubic zirconia” was accepted by Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. Our paper on “Building crystalline Sb2S3 nanowire dandelions with multiple crystal splitting motif” was accepted by Materials Letter.
  • August 2011 Chris Marin won the best poster award for first year graduate students in the 2011 UNL Department of Chemistry Research First Poster Session. Elizabeth Needels won the 2011 NASA EPSCoR Space Grant Fellowship. She was awarded $2,500 towards her research support. Congratulations! Our paper on “Vertical growth of metallic hexaboride nanowires and their field emission properties” was accepted by the World Journal of Engineering.
  • June 2011 Keren Jiang successfully defended his M.S. thesis. Congratulations.
  • April 2011 Our paper on “Rare-Earth Hexaboride Nanowires: General Synthetic Design and Analysis Using Atom Probe Tomography” was accepted by Chemistry of Materials. The UCARE program at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln awarded Dichele Jackson, Elizabeth Needels, and Michael Thompson each with an undergraduate research grant of $1000 for the 2011-2012 academic year. Congratulations!

2010

  • November 2010 Graduate student, Yunyun Zhou, joined the Cheung group. Welcome!
  • September 2010 Graduate students, Zane Gernhart and Chris Marin, joined the Cheung group. Welcome!
  • August 2010 Joseph R. Brewer sucessfully defended his Ph.D. thesis. He is the first Ph.D. student graduated from Cheung group at UNL. Neil J. Lawrence also succesfully defended his master thesis. Congratulations!
  • July 2010 Our undergraduate research assistant, Robert M. Jacobberger, was awarded a NASA NE EPSCoR fellowship to study the use of textured electrodes for protyping supercapacitors for the period September 2010 to Mar 2011. Another undergraduate researcher, Marcella Ihrig, was also awarded a NASA NE EPSCoR fellowship to study effect of gamma ray radiation on cells incubated with nanoparticles. Congratulations!
  • June 2010 Our paper on “Growth of [100] textured gadolinium nitride films by chemical vapor deposition” was accepted by Chemical Vapor Deposition.
  • May 2010 Our graduate research assistant, Joseph R. Brewer, was awarded the UNL Chemistry research assistant award. Congratulations!
  • April 2010 Our undergraduate research assistant, Robert M. Jacobberger, was awarded the prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship. A Keithley system was set up with a LabView control program for the Hall effect and Van de Pauw measurement for conducitve thin films synthesized in our laboratory. Our newly modified chemical vapor deposition system was proven to produce conformal boron films on 2″ wafers.
  • March 2010 We installed a second gas chromatography system with an automatic injection valve for long-term studies of the catalytic activities of engineered catalysts made in our laboratory.
  • January 2010 Our paper with our collaborators at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on “Etching of 10boron with SF6-based electron cyclotron resonance plasmas for pillar-structured thermal neutron detectors” was published in the Journal of Electronic Materials.

2009

  • December 2009 Our undergraduate research assistant, Robert M. Jacobberger, was awarded a NASA NE EPSCoR fellowship to study the field emission properties of lanthanum hexaboride nanowire and nanoobelisks for the period January 2010 to May 2010. Congratulations!
  • September 2009 We installed a gas chromatography system to study the catalytic activities of nanomaterials made in our laboratory.
  • August 2009 Our paper with our collaborators at University of Nebraska-Omaha and the Scripps Research Institute on “Steric and electrostatic complementarity in 2D virus assembly” was accepted by Langmuir.
  • July 2009 Our paper with our collaborators at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on “Comparison of CF4 and SF6 based plasmas for ECR etching of isotopically enriched 10boron films” was published in Nuclear Instrument and Method A.
  • May 2009 Our paper on “Morphological evolution of neodymium boride nanostructure growth by chemical vapor deposition” was published in Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
  • April 2009 The UCARE program at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln has awarded Robert Jacobberger undergraduate research grant for the 2009-2010 academic year in the amount of $2000. Congratulations!

2008

  • September 2008 Our paper with our collaborators at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on “6:1 aspect ratio silicon pillar based thermal neutron detector filled with 10B” was published in Applied Physics Letters in September of 2008.