Within this merit review period, Dr. Xiaofeng Liu has been directing UCI’s Thermal, Elemental, Mechanical, Physical, and Rheological (TEMPR) Facility. He has been overseeing more than 20 materials characterization instruments, teaching bulk materials characterization techniques, and contributing substantially to the overall management of IMRI. Dr. Liu has earned great reviews and respect from users in this position. Dr. Liu also participated actively in research activities and public services within IMRI and across the campus.

Professional Competence and Activity

TEMPR Facility was established in July 2019 for the analysis of bulk soft and hard materials across disciplines. The facility joined MRSEC in 2020 and serves an essential role for both on-campus users and researchers from other research institutions and local industry. The facility currently houses a suite of state-of-the-art characterization instruments. The portfolio includes thermal analysis instruments (DSC2500, DSC Q2000, DSC Polyma, TGA Libra, TGA Q500, STA), chemical and elemental analysis instruments (FlashSmart, ICP-MS, easyXAFS, EDX-7000, Aelos QMS, and Bruker FT-IR, Teledyne Laser Ablation System), mechanical and rheological analysis instruments (DMA Q800, DMA 850, HR-2 rheometer, and Instron 3365), physical analysis instruments (3Flex, AccuPyc, and APC-MALS-RI, APC-PDA-RI, and UPLC), summing up to a total of 22 instruments.

One of Dr. Liu’s primary responsibilities is to oversee the day-to-day operations of many materials characterization instruments listed above, including instrument maintenance, serving the testing needs of academic and industrial users, teaching and training users on these instruments and related techniques, coordinating with service technicians and sales personnel to advance the characterization capability, employing educational activities to researchers across the board, leading the upgrade of the facilities, and promoting the facilities on and off campus.

1. Dr. Liu has maintained a lab with more than 20 instruments proactively to allow for maximal up time. He has equipped himself with application-level knowledge in teaching and educating all areas that are covered by the TEMPR facility. He could work independently for troubleshooting, component replacement, and repairing other issues. Meanwhile, he has kept a close relationship with all vendors for major instrument repairs and led the effort of upgrading the instruments.
2. Dr. Liu had provided timely instrument training sessions to users since the lab was established. TEMPR has received growing numbers of training requests each fiscal year: 259 (2021-2022), 283 (2022-2023), and 297 (2023-2024), which were submitted by 119, 144, and 125 unique users, respectively. The total number of unique users between 2021 and 2024 is 309. During these same fiscal-year periods, the total hours of instrument usage in TEMPR Lab are: 6115 hours (2021-2022), 7144 hours (2022-2023), and 8613 hours (2023-2024). The corresponding recharge incomes are: $68k (2021-2022), $75k (2022-2023), and $131k (2023-2024).
3. Led the acquisition, installation, teaching, and maintenance of UPLC, and APC-PDA-RI under the MRSEC program between 2020 and 2024. Dr. Liu has also:
4. Led the installation and maintenance of easyXAFS since September 2022.
5. Led the acquisition and installation of DMA 850 in 2024 under the MRSEC program.
6. Led the installation and maintenance of EDX-7000 in 2023 from a donation of Shimadzu.
7. Led the upgrade efforts for Instron 3365 UTS, APC, and HR-2 rheometer in late 2024.
8. Dr. Liu took UCI compliance training courses and maintained an up-to-date portfolio of chemical and instrumental inventories and safety-compliant documents and lab practices.
9. Dr. Liu recruited three lab specialists working in assisting users with characterization needs as well as the day-to-day operations of the lab. These lab specialists contributed to user engagement, project services, problem-solving, instrument maintenance, lab maintenance, and marketing.
10. Dr. Liu made great efforts in attracting external users and providing them with testing services. Staff-run project services have been completed timely to deliver high-quality testing results and technical reports to users on- and off-campus including research institutions and companies.

Research and Creative Work

Dr. Liu has been participating in discussing project ideas and developing research collaboration opportunities with research groups in the Schools of Engineering, Physical Sciences, and Medicine as well as startup companies and external institutions. Dr. Liu created promotional material to expand the users reach of TEMPR facility and educate users about TEMPR’s capabilities inside and outside of UCI. TEMPR facility has supported many publications in peer-reviewed journals. A selected list of publications can be seen at the appendix:12 in 2021-2022, 15 in 2022-2023, and 21 in 2023-2024.

Dr. Liu has maintained an active research profile in line with his primary duty of overseeing the facilities. He collaborated with UCI and external researchers on ten projects. He co-first authored a research paper published in Nanophotonics (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/nanoph-2020-0214) during the time in TEMPR.

1. He was a supporting person for the proposal “Fast, free-breathing, arrhythmias-insensitive, cardiac Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) for accurate intramyocardial assessment in iron-targeted intramyocardial hemorrhagic therapy” led by Cedars Sinai Medical Center and UCLA.
2. He provided five supporting letters for five SBIR proposals led by Ecotune.
3. He provided a supporting letter for a project by Intelligent Optical Systems.
4. He was a supporting person for one SBIR proposal by Versatiled.
5. He served as consultant and co-participant for a grant titled “Ex Vivo Assessment of Muscle Fixation Techniques” led by researchers in the UCI medical school.
6. He participated in the IMRI open house in 2022 and 2023.
7. He participated in the MRSEC five-year review by NSF in 2024.
8. He gave IMRI facility tours to visitors on- and off-campus.

University and Public Service

In addition to his job duties, Dr. Liu has been promoting the usage of new tools and software (e.g., Teams) for communication across the team and beyond to improve work and collaboration efficiency.

Dr. Liu has also been actively involved in event organization for IMRI and CCAM. He has been part of the coordination committee for organizing the annual ISAMS and STEM school. He is also the organizing committee member of the upcoming 16th International Symposium on Ferroic Domains & Micro- to Nano-scopic Structures (ISFD-16). He has designed and maintained all relevant websites and registration workflows for these events.

Dr. Liu served as the main person in managing, maintaining, and improving the IMRI (http://imri.uci.edu) and MRSEC (http://ccam.uci.edu) websites.

Dr. Liu served as a contributor for the IMRI and CCAM newsletters.

Dr. Liu led the kickstart of the Marketing Initiatives to promote IMRI and MRSEC in 2024 which includes the hiring of undergraduate marketing assistants, planning online content marketing, and conceptualizing online webinars and lectures.