Inaugural Nakho Sung Award recipients announced

Two Ph.D. students in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Bricker Like and Ryan O’Hara, were recently honored with the inaugural Nakho Sung Graduate Student Travel Award. For 35 years, Professor Nakho Sung was a prominent member of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Tufts University. As both a scholar and mentor, Professor Sung was beloved among members of the Tufts community and highly respected in the materials science research community. In honor of his decades-long contributions to the University, his family made a generous donation toward establishing the Nakho Sung Graduate Student Travel Award after his death in 2022. Other members of the Tufts community were also invited to contribute to the fund which supports professional growth for outstanding Ph.D. students broadly within the area of materials science.

Bricker Like is a chemical engineering Ph.D. student in Professor and Dean of Research Matt Panzer’s Green Energy and Novel Electrolytes Lab at Tufts. He investigates novel materials for safe, effective battery electrolytes. Battery electrolytes allow energy to flow through the battery and generate power. Like focuses on lithium-rich, ionic liquid silica structured gel (ionogel) electrolytes, and studies how zwitterionic additives can improve conductivity. Better conductivity means more efficient batteries. He has shown that using zwitterions in the preparation of these ionogels significantly alters the silica gel’s formation, and that the zwitterions added to the system strongly attach to the surface of the silica structure. These findings could lead to more effective lithium transport within the electrolyte.

With support from the Nakho Sung Graduate Student Travel Award, he presented his research at the American Institute for Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Fall 2025 annual meeting in Boston. He also plans to present at a future Gordon Research Conference. “These conferences provide spaces for me to network and share scientific knowledge with professors and other students from around the world, and from a variety of chemical engineering disciplines,” he shared.

Ph.D. student in materials science Ryan O’Hara also presented their work at the AIChE Fall 2025 annual meeting thanks to the Nakho Sung Graduate Student Travel Award. They develop additives for silicone-based biomedical devices in Professor Ayse Asatekin’s research group. Devices with poly (dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) surfaces must be functionalized, or made ready for use, through an intricate process of plasma treatment and silane surface grafting. Current methods only provide a small window of functionalization after preparation and must be used within a day or less. In collaboration with researchers from the Center for Engineering in Medicine and Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), O’Hara designed a zwitterionic copolymer that can be used to functionalize the surface at any point after curing. The additives boast minimal post-processing steps and proteins that cannot be removed even with harsh washing. These benefits hold promise to expand the potential applications of PDMS materials. The award also supported O’Hara in sharing their findings at the recent Materials Research Society (MRS) fall meeting.

During his lifetime, Professor Sung made countless contributions to materials science and to Tufts. He created several new materials science courses at Tufts, published over 100 technical papers and chapters, edited a book, and held multiple patents. He provided extensive service to various professional societies throughout his career and earned many honors and awards. Some of his accolades include being inducted as an elected member of the prestigious Korean National Academy of Engineering and receiving the National Medal of Honor in Science and Technology with highest distinction, which is the highest national honor bestowed upon individual scientists and engineers in South Korea.

In addition to his research accomplishments, Professor Sung supervised dozens of undergraduate research and M.S. and Ph.D. thesis projects at Tufts. His impact on students was made clear when he was selected for the Seymour Simches Award for Distinguished Teaching and Advising in 2013. The Nakho Sung Graduate Student Travel Award honors his passion for supporting students by facilitating Ph.D. students to share their research with the wider materials science community. As the first-ever recipients, O’Hara and Like pay homage to Professor Sung’s impressive legacy through their research.