Meet Pinshane Huang, who’ll end this week with a new title — full professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois.
And then there are the Ivan Racheff Faculty Scholar‘s less formal titles:
— Guinness Book of World Records holder: While a graduate student at Cornell, she was part of an international team of scientists that discovered the world’s thinnest sheet of glass, just a molecule thick.
— Community gardener: “I have two big plots at the community garden at Meadowbrook Park. This time of year, I am drowning in tomatoes, gladiolus and zinnias. Dahlias the size of my head are just starting to bloom.”
— Award winner: The short list includes the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research for Associate Professor (2025), a Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2024), the Rose Award for Teaching Excellence (2023) and the Presidential Early Career Award in Science & Engineering (2019).
The native of Arlington, Texas, who joined the UI faculty in 2015 took Editor Jeff D’Alessio for a virtual tour of some of her most memorable places and spaces on and around the UI campus.
I love teaching in the Campus Instructional Facility, especially the rooms with lots of teaching tech. The rooms are light and airy, and there is enough room to walk around, chat with the students and show off fun demonstrations.
In one of my favorite demos, I get to “liquify” a Styrofoam cup — it looks a bit like a very stringy mucus when I’m done. Students are both fascinated and a bit grossed out by this, so it’s nice to be in a room where they can see it up close.
It depends on the person. The Idea Garden and Japan House are my favorite spots on campus for a non-scientist. I really appreciate the craftsmanship there — every plant has been considered carefully and planned to work together.
For a scientist, I would take them to the Materials Research Laboratory, where my lab is and where I am associate director — it is stuffed with powerful scientific equipment to make and characterize new and better materials, which UI faculty are developing to make our world a better place.
My best professional news usually comes in my office, chatting with members of my research group as they tell me about exciting discoveries they have made. These are my favorite times each week.
We recently developed a way to make our microscope so powerful, we can “see” atoms vibrating due to heat. That work just came out in (the peer-reviewed journal) Science two weeks ago.
I mostly interviewed in the building I work in now, the Materials Research Laboratory. It’s fun to remember what the building looked like then, because it is ever-evolving to keep up with the research that’s happening inside. Many of the labs have been completely renovated since I’ve been here.
I like to stroll around the first two floors of Loomis while I think. I can peek in on students in study sections or taking physics labs, which takes me back to my undergrad days.
I also like looping around the Rosalyn Sussman Yalow Auditorium in Loomis, which honors a great woman physicist, alumna and Nobel Prize winner who revolutionized endocrinology.
I like the Stacks. I love the feeling of being surrounded by the world’s knowledge and imagining that all I need to do to learn something new is reach out and grab a book.
I’m a big fan of Dim Sum House. I like dumplings — of all kinds! — and their stir-fried flat noodles. You really can’t go wrong with noodles and dumplings. I’ll also go there to pick up egg tarts for my daughter.
The Materials Research Lab has a 14-foot-tall microscope that we use to image atoms. It’s my baby — almost all my group’s research is done on that microscope. Sometimes, I sneak downstairs and give it a little pat. I think it helps somehow.
My second-favorite thing is the mammoth outside of the Natural History Building. It’s a bit of whimsy that transports you to another time.
