January 2025 MMLI Spotlights

Faculty: Ying Diao

headshot of Siru Ouyang, a graduate student

Scholar: Siru Ouyang


Faculty Spotlight: Ying Diao

Ying Diao is an Associate Professor, University Scholar and Dow Chemical Company Faculty Scholar in Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Co-Chair of Molecular Science and Engineering in the Beckman Institute of Advanced Science and Technology, and a Thrust Lead of the Molecular Maker Lab Institute – an NSF AI Institute. She received her Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from MIT in 2012. Her doctoral thesis was on understanding heterogeneous nucleation of pharmaceuticals by designing polymeric substrates. In her subsequent postdoctoral training at Stanford University, she pursued research in the thriving field of printed electronics. Diao group, started in 2015 at Illinois, focuses on understanding assembly of organic functional materials and innovating printing approaches that enable structural control down to the molecular and nanoscale.  [Click to read more]

What is your background/what did you do before your current role?
I was trained on pharmaceutical crystallization during PhD, and then switched field to pursue printed electronics since 2011.

What is your current position/short description of what you are working on right now with MMLI. 
Through MMLI I joined an awesome team to pursue autonomous experimentation and closed-loop materials discovery. It has been one of the most exciting pivot in my career thus far.

What drew you to MMLI (or your lab)? 
Team science at its best at an exciting frontier of AI-guided functional molecular discovery.

What has been your favorite part of being a part of MMLI?
Realizing the saying that “team work makes dream work”. Developing long-lasting infrastructure to enable autonomous discovery of next generation electronics.

How do you like to spend your free time? 
Playing music band with my little ones, making snow angels and doing snowball flight with family.

Fun fact (or extremely average fact) about yourself you would like to share.
I find my martial art skill useful is to protect myself against my son who is very dynamic and active.



Scholar Spotlight: Siru Ouyang

Siru Ouyang is a graduate student in Jiawei Han’s group at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois. In MMLI, her research focuses on Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning in MMLI. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from the IEEE honored class at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in 2022 and joined Han’s group the same year. [Click to read more]

What is your background and describe your current work/role/lab and the project you are most excited to be working on right now.
I joined Prof. Jiawei Han’s group in 2022 as a PhD student after earning my bachelor’s degree at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. My research focuses on Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. Specifically speaking, I work on complex reasoning of Large Language Models for real-world user applications. Right now I am actively working on scientific information extraction and reasoning in MMLI. I also coordinate Prof. Han’s MMLI projects within our group.

What drew you to your project and/or MMLI?
I am interested in leveraging AI technologies to advance scientific domains.

What has been your favorite part of being a part of MMLI?
The collaborative atmosphere. It’s great to work with people from both AI and science areas to actually do projects about AI4sci or sci4AI. People at MMLI are always supportive, knowledgeable, and kind to work with. Together we have developed many systems for users, such as ReactionMiner. I am excited to see what we will create next!
 
How do you like to spend your free time? (or what would you do for fun if you had more free time!)
I enjoy playing video games and playing the piano.
 
Fun fact (or extremely average fact) about yourself you would like to share.
I have a cat named Turing.

headshot of Siru Ouyang, a graduate student