M. Shaharyar Wani at one of Princeton's scanning electron microscopes. Photo courtesy of Shaharyar Wani
By Wright B. Señeres
Dec. 20, 2024
M. Shaharyar Wani won a Carbon Nanomaterials Graduate Student Award at the 2024 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) meeting in San Diego, California.
Wani studies a novel mechanism that enables sustainable and scalable synthesis of advanced aerogel materials using natural precursors like proteins. These aerogels have shown promise in shielding sensitive electronics from electromagnetic interference, among other technological applications in the energy and water landscape. Wani’s presentation focused on a type of aerogel called an HGA, or hierarchically porous graphitic aerogel. He is advised by Craig B. Arnold, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Princeton’s vice dean for innovation.
He received the award for “Protein Derived Hierarchically Porous Graphitic Aerogels: Unraveling Formation Mechanism and their Application in EMI Shielding” at the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum (NSEF) during the AIChE annual meeting. The NSEF provides communication and networking among engineers and scientists working in research and development of chemical, biological and materials processes and products at the atomic, molecular or macromolecular levels.
Wani received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Kashmir and a master’s degree in energy sciences from Jamia Millia Islamia. He is a 2024 Diversity Fellow in the Graduate School at Princeton and a Guggenheim Fellow in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineerin