Two faculty members from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) have been named 2026 Sloan Research Fellows, one of the most prestigious awards available to early-career researchers in the United States and Canada.
Chibueze Amanchukwu, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering, and Peter Maurer, Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering, are among 126 exceptional researchers selected by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to receive the two-year, $75,000 fellowship to further their innovative research.
Peter Maurer: Biology Meets Quantum Engineering
Maurer's research sits at the intersection of quantum engineering and biophotonics, developing new types of quantum sensors to study biological systems in ways that current technologies cannot. His lab tackles two complementary challenges: exploring the fundamental limits of quantum systems in noisy biological environments, and engineering quantum sensors to probe specific biological processes at the molecular scale.
“We are trying to bring the precision of quantum physics into the complexity of living systems, by using quantum effects not just to study biology, but to become part of it.” Maurer said.
Biology operates at the molecular length scale, where signals are often extremely small—precisely the regime where quantum sensors excel. Unlike conventional fluorescent labels that reveal a molecule’s position, quantum sensors can detect properties like nuclear spin density that change with protein conformational shifts or ion transport through cellular channels.
Maurer’s lab recently demonstrated the first protein-based qubit—a breakthrough that Physics World named one of the top 10 physics discoveries of 2025. With the new Sloan Fellowship support, Maurer hopes to expand those biological qubits into larger quantum arrays—something difficult to achieve with conventional platforms but potentially possible by harnessing biology's natural ability to organize matter with atomic precision.
“This is a wonderful honor, and these fellowships are particularly valuable because they tend to be much less restricted than federal funding,” Maurer said. “We can use this to try some of our crazier ideas and see where they go.”
Maurer received his PhD in physics from Harvard University, where he pioneered quantum control of room-temperature qubits with record coherence times. He previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University with Nobel laureate Steven Chu.
Chibueze Amanchukwu: Reimagining Energy Storage
Amanchukwu’s work addresses a critical challenge in the clean energy transition: how electrolytes—the substances that allow electrical charge to flow in batteries—control chemical reactions during energy storage and conversion. His lab has pioneered a novel “carbon and salt” battery that is earth abundant, safer and can be cheaper than current lithium-ion batteries. His team has also created machine learning models that can predict electrolyte performance and generate new electrolyte formulations for next-generation batteries.
“I love working at the intersection of different fields,” Amanchukwu says as his group has also taken longstanding electrolyte design strategies from batteries to address challenges such as PFAS (per-and-poly fluoroalkyl substances) degradation and efficient electrochemical carbon dioxide capture and conversion.
With the Sloan Fellowship, he plans to focus on understanding the electrode/electrolyte interface by developing sensing technologies that are stable and yield high resolution. Developing sensors for batteries could give researchers new insight into what happens during charging and discharging.
“Developing sensors for electrochemistry will be transformational as it will enable unprecedented access to chemical phenomena, shed light into reaction pathways, and guide novel material design,” says Amanchukwu.
Amanchukwu, who also holds a joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory, received his PhD in chemical engineering from MIT and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University and the University of Cambridge. His work has earned him recognition as one of MIT Technology Review’s “Innovators Under 35” (2024) and Chemical & Engineering News’ “Talented 12.” He has also received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Program award, an Army Research Office Early Career Award, and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.
Other UChicago PME faculty who have been named Sloan Fellows in past years include Matthew Tirrell, Chong Liu, Hannes Bernien, Margaret Gardel, Liang Jiang, Aashish Clerk, Greg Engel, Aaron Esser-Kahn, Jiwoong Park and Dmitri Talapin.