Renyu Zheng, a graduate student at the University of Washington (UW) who has performed research at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), was selected for the 2025 UW Chemical Engineering (ChemE) Department’s Faculty Lecture Award. The award is the highest research recognition given by the department, awarded annually to a single graduate student.

Selected by the UW ChemE graduate student award committee, this award highlights a chemical engineering graduate student based on overall scholarly nature and research productivity. As part of the award, Zheng received a monetary prize and commemorative plaque. He also presented a 20-minute lecture, “Designing Amphiphilic Peptoids for Controlling the Formation of Nanostructured Biomimetic Materials,” during ChemE Grad Awards’ Day at UW on December 2, 2025.

“I’m honored to have been selected for the Faculty Lecture Award,” said Zheng. “The connections between PNNL and UW have allowed me to leverage state-of-the-science facilities to explore connections between the structure and function of materials.”

Zheng’s research uses peptoids, a class of biomimetic polymers similar to proteins, to build complex nanostructures with targeted functions. These peptoids self-assemble into 1D, 2D, and 3D structures that can be used to create bio-inspired materials with a variety of applications, including energy devices. This work has been done through the Center for the Science of Synthesis Across Scales (CSSAS) Energy Frontier Research Center under the supervision of Chun-Long Chen, a chief scientist at PNNL and an affiliate professor and UW-PNNL faculty fellow. 

“Renyu began working with me as my first master's student and later became my first PhD student after I started my joint appointment at UW,” said Chen. “He has made remarkable contributions to the advancement of the field, showcasing his exceptional abilities in scientific innovation, collaboration, and leadership, which have garnered him well-deserved recognition. Renyu has excelled in his work across both PNNL and UW, demonstrating exceptional productivity, with over 10 scientific publications, including a first-author paper in Nature Communications. It is truly inspiring to see how Renyu has leveraged the unique strengths of both institutions to set a remarkable example of how a graduate student can thrive.”

Zheng has a history of being recognized for scholarly excellence. He was one of only three recipients—and the only student—honored with the Outstanding Oral Presentation award at the 11th Peptoid Summit in 2022 and was chosen to represent the CSSAS DOE Early Career Network as a co-chair in 2023.