A life in academia was a pure profession path for Jing Kong, the daughter of two Chinese lecturers at Tianjin Finance and Economics University: Her father taught and was editor of a journal, and her mom was within the college’s international commerce division and later labored with graduate college students.
Last 12 months, after seven years at MIT, Kong was granted tenure because the ITT Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering.
Her curiosity in science and know-how began, because it does for a lot of folks, with an inspiring trainer. “I had many very good teachers,” Kong recollects, however there was “one in particular, a teacher of physics in middle school , Baoyi Liu. He gave me a lot of encouragement, and helped me to be interested” within the topic.
While in highschool, “I took part in math, physics and chemistry competitions. I was chosen for the preparation class for a chemistry Olympics,” Kong says. Although she didn’t find yourself being chosen for the crew, her 12 months of preparation for the occasion at a Beijing highschool entitled her to admission to one of China’s prime universities. She selected Beijing University as a result of of its shut proximity to her hometown.
Kong studied English throughout her undergraduate years, inspired by many of her classmates who have been planning to go overseas to complete their research. After graduating in 1997, she determined to attend Stanford University for graduate research — as a result of, she says, its acceptance letter was first to reach.
At Stanford, Kong started learning carbon nanotubes, microscopic cylinders fashioned by single-atom-thick sheets of carbon, which have been by then a scorching analysis space. She credit her “very talented” thesis advisor, Hongjie Dai, for the truth that her analysis in that subject, which targeted on discovering higher ways of synthesizing the fabric, was “very fruitful, and produced quite a lot of publications.”
Working with a number of different graduate college students, Kong discovered what turned out to be a really efficient approach of bettering the manufacturing of nanotubes and controlling their progress, which made it a lot simpler to supply digital gadgets from them. “It turned out to be very useful,” she says, and the crew shared the approach with many different analysis teams.
While she loved her work at Stanford, Kong finally felt burned out and a bit misplaced, and commenced questioning the that means of her efforts — so she joined a campus evangelical fellowship. At first, she says, “I was very much resistant to that idea that there is a God, but my perception changed after a seminar and discussion there.” By the time she graduated, she recollects, she had turn out to be a Christian; ever since, she says, her religion has performed “a critical role in my life.”
Kong’s first job after incomes her doctorate was as a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center, close to the Stanford campus. (Her husband, He Dong, {an electrical} engineer whom she had met at Beijing University after which married whereas pursuing her doctorate, already had a job within the Bay Area.) But she discovered pure analysis unsatisfying, and longed to return to an educational atmosphere the place she might work with college students and spend her life in a extra significant approach, sharing her spiritual religion with others. She acquired a suggestion from MIT, and after a quick stint as a postdoc at Delft University within the Netherlands, she began work on the Institute in 2004. She and her husband are actually elevating two daughters.
Kong’s analysis at MIT has continued to deal with carbon nanomaterials, together with nanotubes and graphene sheets. She has pioneered a new methodology of producing massive sheets of graphene — beforehand out there solely in tiny flakes — and is constant to work on bettering the tactic. “I want to improve the quality of the material we make, and share the methods with colleagues,” she says.
With carbon nanotubes, she has targeted on growing ways to make use of the tiny buildings as extraordinarily delicate chemical detectors for poisonous gases, and ways of integrating them into new varieties of digital gadgets.
Kong is emphatic about what’s most vital to her. “The research is only a platform for me to do God’s work,” she says. “His creation, the way he made this world, is very interesting. It’s amazing, really.”