Photo illustration by Wright Seneres; photo courtesy of Lilia Xie Written by Wright B. Señeres Feb. 23, 2024 Materials chemist Lilia Xie, a 2014 undergraduate alumna, is currently an Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California-Berkeley and a L’Oreal USA For Women in Science Fellow. At Berkeley, she works with Kwabena Bediako on creating new materials and studying their electronic and magnetic properties at the atomic level to enable more efficient technologies for processing and storing data. She got her start studying chemistry at Princeton, advised by Robert Cava, the Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry and associated faculty member at the Princeton Materials Institute (PMI). Xie also earned a Certificate in Materials Science and Engineering, which she said put her on the path to a career in materials research. What made you decide to come to Princeton? I was very much undecided on my major starting out, and Princeton has such a diversity of strengths in not only sciences and engineering, but also humanities, arts, and more. I was able to take coursework in many different departments and pursue my interests inside and outside of the classroom. What sparked your interest in materials science? I joined Professor Robert Cava's group in the Department of Chemistry for my junior independent work and really fell in love with solid state chemistry. Doing research in the Cava lab, it felt like the whole periodic table was our playground. I loved working in the lab and learning different characterization techniques to study my samples. Bob was so encouraging and supportive, and his love for science and adventurous spirit were contagious. Leslie Schoop (also an associated faculty member in PMI) was my graduate student mentor and an awesome scientific role model. I was so lucky to learn from two of the best in the business. From there, it was a no-brainer to pursue the (then) Certificate in Materials Science and Engineering so that I could delve deeper into understanding the structure and properties of materials. How has your Princeton experience shaped your career? Without a doubt, I would not be pursuing my current career if not for my Princeton experience! My junior and senior independent work sparked my interest in research, which ultimately led to graduate study at MIT (with Mircea Dincă) and now a postdoc at UC Berkeley (with Kwabena Bediako), both in materials chemistry. What’s next for you? I'm hoping to start my own research group! I'm interested in exploring how molecular species can be incorporated into low-dimensional inorganic materials to tune their electronic and magnetic properties. I've benefited from working with so many great mentors at Princeton and throughout all my training thus far, and I'm excited to pay it forward as a principal investigator in the future.