Bringing nature’s complexity to engineered materials

 Inspired by how complexity emerges in nature, producing materials with exceptional capabilities, chemist and nanoengineer Nicholas A. Kotov developed methods to analyze and remix nature’s structures. His approaches—including techniques such as graph theory, layer-by-layer deposition, and self-assembly in solution—take advantage of both the properties of the building blocks and their arrangement to make materials that are more than the sum of their parts. 

Beyond this foundational work, Kotov’s entrepreneurship includes tough membranes for rechargeable batteries.

For scalable methods for the self-assembly of anisotropic nanoparticles and multifunctional nanocomposites that led to commercially viable advanced materials, Kotov was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2025. View the NAE citation. 

Societal impact

In addition to the battery startup, Kotov leads a Science and Technology Center funded by the National Science Foundation. The research team has formalized methods for designing nanomaterials for specific functions, exploring applications such as light and strong structures for aircraft bodies, dressings for faster wound healing, and lubricants and soil amendments for agriculture.

Affiliations

• Irving Langmuir Distinguished University Professor of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Joseph B. and Florence V. Cejka Professor of Engineering, professor of chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, and mechanical engineering, University of Michigan.
• Scientific Founder, Valerian Energy.

Background & education

• Professor, Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan, joined faculty in 2003
• Professor, Oklahoma State University, 1996-2003
• Visiting professor, Hamburg, Germany, 1997, 1999
• Postdoctoral associate, Chemistry, Syracuse University, 1992-1996
• Research associate, Laboratory of Photochemistry, 1990-1992
• Ph.D., Chemistry/Reaction Kinetics, Moscow State University, 1990
• B.S., Chemistry/Chemical Engineering, Moscow State University, 1987

In their own words

Tell us about yourself

Kotov: I’m a scientist. I don’t know how to better describe it. I have wanted to be a scientist since my childhood. I grew up in Moscow and my parents were scientists. I’m just lucky that I’m doing what I like to do. Being a scientist, for me, is not just a scientist in thoughts, but a scientist hands-on. I studied chemistry and chemistry was the right choice because it is every science combined. You can be a mathematician, a physicist, a true organic or inorganic chemist, and a computational person. I liked that aspect because it did not close any path. I realized that I have to develop my own identity in science—not just capitalize on trends, but think about what contribution I can make. 

What experiences have shaped who you are?

Kotov: I grew up in Moscow, and my mom and dad were a chemist and physicist, respectively. My mom had a country house, and I spent a lot of time in the woods, picking mushrooms and berries, and just walking through the woods. It was formative because I loved nature. I learned about animals and insects firsthand—butterflies, moths. All of that created an ethos of ‘It’s fun to learn. It’s fun to explore.’ My mom encouraged that and taught me a lot about her work. Then she took me into her lab, and I got sold almost immediately. I loved even the smells. My dad always insisted that mathematics had to be part of anything, and that helped me later. Moving from Moscow to Syracuse and then to Oklahoma was also educational and exciting. It was a time of growing up as a scientist, when I learned how to do science, write papers, teach students, and develop my own identity in science.

Tell me about your research and its impact on society.

Kotov: I work on nanoscale structures that represent and behave like many biological building blocks. They’re inorganic, but they also have many properties from the biological side, and the combination of these two creates an amazing array of new effects and new possibilities. The basic content of my work is how to make incredibly complex structures similar to biology from non-living components and combine properties that would otherwise be impossible to combine. A lot of the impact comes from practical applications. Our work on graphene oxide and self-assembly helped create materials that are strong, conductive, store a lot of electricity, and control the transport of ions. Batteries, supercapacitors, and many two-dimensional materials are made through similar self-assembly approaches. We also developed cartilage-like materials from Kevlar nanofibers and ultrathin membranes that can make batteries safer and more durable by helping prevent failures that can lead to fires. Engineering, to me, is about making a difference in the world and helping people, and it is exciting to see ideas developed here at the university move into companies and, potentially, products that people use every day.

What advice would you give an engineering student?

Kotov: For every student, I try to give different advice. When I have a new student in my group, I always ask them what they want—it’s not about my mold of the world, it’s what they plan for themselves and what they consider to be successful. I’m trying to ask more questions than to say ‘do this, not that.’ But if I would say it in a more general way, it’s: be different. You have to have your own identity, your own universe, your own personality that will be different from everybody else. You need to not be afraid of your dark sides and white sides, and integrate them as well as you can, and learn how you can make a difference in that world. You’re unique, and you need to stand out because that’s where both the dangers and also the pleasure of being a human are—you realize you are not just a student or citizen, but a person who asks: How will I impact the world?

Which part of your career has given you the most satisfaction?

Kotov: I recently had a birthday celebration of 60 years and the National Academy election, and there was a special session at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers where students from many years back came from many countries. And I realized that I did something right. I think that was a lot of satisfaction, a lot of realization that the effort that I put in—sometimes erratic, sometimes very focused—eventually led to the implementation of thoughts I had as a young scientist. That realization of vision down the line was extremely satisfying. What felt like ‘crazy ideas’ were eventually not so crazy, and people continue working on them in many parts of the world. That was a bit of an epiphany. 

A lot of satisfaction also comes from the work itself—when a good paper comes out after many years of working, or when you can convince a colleague that a vision of a chemical process is true even if it seemed too novel at first. Uncovering things is extremely satisfactory. When you have those ‘aha moments’—‘oh, that’s how it works, that’s how it all fits together’—I think that’s the greatest feeling on Earth.

What challenges and opportunities do you see for your field?

Kotov: It’s a very significant pivot in the humanities at the moment because I anticipate AI will make humongous changes that we will be looking back on and thinking we should have seen earlier. The changes will be dramatic. Learning, learning, learning is what we should do now. AI is not at all just a tool anymore—it’s already a rival to many humans. I anticipate it will be an equalizer, because intelligence will now be available to everybody, and intelligence is the greatest capital that rich countries have. Now intelligence will be shared, and this will accelerate development for everybody. But I’m worried it may also increase inequality in other ways. Humanity will change—our ability to accommodate other humans may be replaced by other forms of connection. There will be unintended consequences we would never wish for, and we still don’t fully understand how it will go.

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Quotes edited from interview transcript between Nicholas A. Kotov and Marcin Szczepanski.