Profile: Ju Li explores new nanomaterials
Ju Li, a professor in MIT’s departments of materials science and engineering and nuclear science and engineering.Photo: M. Scott Brauer Growing up in China as the son of two engineers, Ju Li says he was initially more interested in pure science than in hands-on engineering. “I was pretty fascinated by theoretical physics when I was a kid,” he recalls.But in the end, he found a way to combine the theoretical with the practical: studying how atoms and electrons behave and interact in a way that allows him to design new materials from the atomic level on up. Li, who holds a joint appointment as a professor in MIT’s departments of materials science and engineering (DMSE) and nuclear science and engineering (NSE), has ended up in a field of research that could transform the way energy is generated, stored and used — in everything from batteries tinier than mitochondria to huge nuclear...