Ying Family Scholars Fellowship Targets Energy Sustainability through Materials Engineering 

Doctoral students play inherently critical roles within the academic and research enterprise of every university. Not only do they conduct much of the research that pushes fields forward toward making real impacts on society while helping to teach courses, they prepare themselves to enter industry or become the next generation of faculty scientists. 

These future leaders are supported financially through grants obtained by their faculty advisors, which can often be a source of stress when uncertainty around federal funding is rising. To help ensure talented students pursuing transformational technologies can focus entirely on their work, schools and funding agencies also create competitive fellowships as another route to support. 

It is rare, however, that individual donors provide the funding for these types of fellowships. That is what makes a new gift from Steven Ying and Young Kim P’29 all the more remarkable. Beginning this year, their generosity will provide full two-year support for a PhD student pursuing research in energy sustainability through the Duke Materials Initiative. 

The fellowship, supported through the couple’s Foundation for Amazing Potentials Ltd., provides a full stipend, tuition and graduate school fees, health insurance, and up to $2,800 annually in travel reimbursement for conferences and research-related travel. The award supports students pursuing materials research related to energy and sustainability, including solar energy, advanced batteries and fuel cells, carbon sequestration, computational materials development, and energy-efficient next-generation computing. 

“Forty-five years ago, I was a recipient of the C.V. Starr Scholarship, which afforded me a higher education in this country and opened a lifetime of opportunity,” Ying said. “Having benefited from this support, it is now my turn to extend the same opportunity to the next generation, ensuring more people have the resources to rise.” 

The inaugural Ying Family Scholar is Yuruo Zheng. A fourth-year PhD candidate in the laboratory of Natalia Litchinitser, the Michael J. Fitzpatrick Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Zheng’s research lies at the intersection of nanophotonics, materials science and energy-efficient computing. 

Her project, “Multilayer Optical Metasurfaces for Energy-Efficient Optical Computing,” explores ultrathin, nanostructured materials that can manipulate and process information using light. As demand for artificial intelligence, imaging, and data analysis grows, conventional computing systems require significant energy to process and store information. Zheng’s work seeks to develop multilayer optical metasurfaces that can perform functions such as signal processing and wavefront control directly in optical hardware, offering a potential path toward more compact, multifunctional and energy-efficient computing technologies. 

“Receiving this fellowship was both surprising and incredibly exciting,” Zheng said. “It is very motivating to know that others believe in my work and in the future projects I hope to pursue. The support will help me continue building on this research and exploring new directions.” 

Ying and Kim see the fellowship as an extension of their Foundation’s commitment to both achievement and access. 

“The Duke Materials Initiative brings James B. Duke’s idea of ‘practical knowledge’ into the modern world,” Ying said. “By breaking down walls across eight departments — uniting experts in fields from chemistry and physics to engineering and biology — the initiative focuses on real-world impact. Instead of studying abstract theory in isolation, the Duke Materials Initiative takes science at the atomic scale and uses it to solve big societal problems — an approach that aligns with our Foundation’s values.”