Research Interests
Carbon Capture and Removal | Negative Emissions | Decarbonization | Critical Materials, Metals, and Minerals | Bioinspired Soft Matter | Supramolecular & Porous Materials | Polymer Science & Engineering
Bio
Feng Group's mission is to develop innovative materials and mechanisms to address pressing global challenges in energy and health. We have three directions in the group: (1) Carbon Capture and Removal: The climate crisis is reshaping how we harvest, store, and consume energy globally. Our group at Duke is dedicated to tackling grand challenges in environmental sustainability by working at the intersection of materials science, photochemical and electrochemical processes, and polymer science and engineering to capture and remove carbon from complex and often dilute mixtures. (2) Critical Materials, Metals, and Minerals: Our work draws inspiration from biological systems to develop innovative solutions for capturing and utilizing critical materials, metals, and minerals directly from water. (3) Bioinspired Soft Matter: Learning from nature, our project seeks to develop molecular systems that replicate the intricate synthesis and high-fidelity mechanisms seen in biological processes, such as those driven by ribosomes.
Education
- Ph.D. Texas A&M University, 2020
Positions
- Assistant Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Awards, Honors, and Distinctions
- Early Career Editorial Board of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. American Chemical Society. 2025
- Bezos Earth Fund $1M Greenhouse Gas Removal Ideation Prize Winner. Bezos Earth Fund. 2024
- ACS Sustainability Star. American Chemical Society. 2024
- IGNIITE Early-Career Innovator. ARPA-E / US Department of Energy. 2024
- Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award. Sloan Foundation. 2024
- Duke Trailblazer. Pratt School of Engineering. 2024
- Agilent Early Career Professor Award Finalist . Agilent. 2024
- IUPAC Top Ten Emerging Technologies in Chemistry. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. 2024
- Scialog Fellow in Negative Emissions Science. Research Corporation for Science Advancement. 2023
- Forbes 30 Under 30. Forbes. 2022
- Award for Excellence in Publications by a Young Member. International Adsorption Society. 2022
- 12 Under 12 Young Alumni Spotlight. Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University. 2022
- MRS Postdoctoral Award. Materials Research Society. 2022
- Distinguished Student Award in Nanotechnology. Foresight Institute. 2020
- Graduate Student Award . Materials Research Society. 2020
- Distinguished Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Research. Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University. 2020
Courses Taught
- ME 555: Advanced Topics in Mechanical Engineering
- ME 491: Special Projects in Mechanical Engineering
- ME 490: Special Topics in Mechanical Engineering
- ME 331L: Thermodynamics
In the News
- Duke Trailblazer: Liang Feng (Aug 26, 2024 | Pratt School of Engineering)
- Liang Feng Wins Early Career Award for Carbon-Capture Research (Jul 23, 2024 | Pratt School of Engineering)
- Meet the American Chemical Society’s first sustainability star, Liang Feng (Jun 3, 2024 | Chemical & Engineering News)
- Liang Feng and Team Land Funding for Negative Emission Science Research (Jan 25, 2024 | Pratt School of Engineering)
- Meet the New Faculty Strengthening Duke’s Work on Climate Change (Nov 16, 2023 | Duke Stories)
- Engineering Solutions to Cutting Greenhouse Gases (Oct 26, 2023 | Pratt School of Engineering)
- Liang Feng: Creating Porous Materials for Enhanced Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Sustainable Energy Solutions (Jul 21, 2023 | Pratt School of Engineering)
- Liang Feng Will Be Joining Duke University as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor (May 16, 2023)
- When push comes to shove (Feb 1, 2022)
- Liang Feng named to the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 list (Dec 16, 2021)
- First fundamentally new form of adsorption for more than 90 years driven by molecular machines (Oct 25, 2021)
- Mechanisorption mimics biomolecular machinery (Oct 21, 2021)
Representative Publications
- Wang, Kun-Yu, Zhentao Yang, Jiaqi Zhang, Sayan Banerjee, Elizabeth A. Joseph, Yu-Chuan Hsu, Shuai Yuan, Liang Feng, and Hong-Cai Zhou. “Creating hierarchical pores in metal-organic frameworks via postsynthetic reactions.” Nature Protocols 18, no. 2 (February 2023): 604–25. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-022-00759-7.
- Feng, Liang, R Dean Astumian, and J Fraser Stoddart. “Controlling dynamics in extended molecular frameworks.” Nature Reviews. Chemistry 6, no. 10 (October 2022): 705–25. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-022-00412-7.
- Feng, Liang, Yunyan Qiu, Qing-Hui Guo, Zhijie Chen, James S. W. Seale, Kun He, Huang Wu, et al. “Active mechanisorption driven by pumping cassettes.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 374, no. 6572 (December 2021): 1215–21. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abk1391.