To say Xella Doi, PhD’25, was shocked would be an understatement.
“I thought I must be misreading the email!” she said.
But she wasn’t. Forbes magazine had named her and fellow University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) grad Connor Horn, PhD’25, to their celebrated 30 Under 30 list. The pair shared a slot in the Manufacturing & Industry category in honor of their groundbreaking startup K1 Semiconductor.
“I am profoundly grateful to everyone who made this possible,” said Doi, whose startup is commercializing a wafer-splitting process developed in UChicago PME’s Guha Lab. “Forbes’ 30 Under 30 is exciting, but I'm still even more excited about the new engineered substrates we have in the pipeline at K1 Semiconductor.”
Doi and Horn are two of seven future world-changers from UChicago PME included in Forbes' yearly 30 Under 30 list. Each year, Forbes recognizes 30 innovators under 30 years of age in categories ranging from Music to Finance to Sports to Social Impact.
Holding three of the 30 slots in the Science category and earning separate nods under Manufacturing & Industry, Healthcare and Energy & Greentech, UChicago PME was well-represented for 2025.
The honorees from UChicago PME are:
“At UChicago, we are able to attract some of the best young minds, such as Dr. Yuan Liu,” said UChicago PME and Chemistry Prof. Dmitri Talapin, in whose lab Liu works. “It is not only a privilege to work alongside such talented people, but also a responsibility to support their ideas and help them grow into future intellectual leaders.”
Yuan Liu said the honor “powerfully reaffirmed my commitment to my dream career in research.”
“Being nominated in the Energy & Greentech category validates that our research is valuable and impactful,” he said. “Green technology means more than just renewable energy. It also means creating more durable, highly energy-efficient products and employing clean production methods.”
Nicholas Boynton, now a senior research chemist at 3M, was honored for a revolutionary, shape-shifting “pluripotent plastic” he helped design for NASA with UChicago PME Prof. Stuart Rowan and Assoc. Prof. Shrayesh Patel.
“This honor is a wonderful recognition of the work that we've done to create sustainable, pluripotent materials, and I'm extremely grateful to my mentors at UChicago PME, particularly Stuart and Shrayesh, who helped make this possible,” Boynton said. “I think it provides a motivating force to keep going in order to bring these materials to life and solve a grand challenge in the world.”
Rowan called Boynton “an innovative thinker who is helping reimagine how the world accesses and reuses plastics."
“By designing one source material that can be differentiated to be useful for many applications, Nick is paving the way toward a different way of thinking about material design," Rowan said.
Yahao Dai, now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, was named for his hydrogel semiconductor work in the lab of Assoc. Prof. Sihong Wang.
“This award is a fantastic recognition of Yahao’s achievements and his remarkable potential to become a future pioneer. His work in transforming polymer semiconductors into hydrogel-based architectures opens entirely new application spaces for bio-interfaced electronics,” Wang said. “It demonstrates a level of creativity and scientific vision that is truly exceptional.”
Dai, Doi, Horn and Li all leveraged the larger UChicago community to turn their lab innovations into real-world impact, working with colleagues at the Booth School of Business and the UChicago Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Doi and Horn’s former advisor UChicago PME Prof. Supratik Guha said being named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 was another sign of great things to come from the pair.
“Both Connor and Xella were quite set on making engineering impact as a career focus and I had encouraged them to consider their own startup,” Guha said. “Based upon my observation of their scientific and engineering abilities during their PhD research, I am confident that they will succeed in whatever they set their sights on.”