Advances in nanoscience and engineering, analytical tools and computation offer tremendous opportunities to design the function of materials and chemical processes.The department is ideally positioned to be a major contributor in this area. The existing strengths in knowledge-based synthesis and manufacturing of nanomaterials, especially solar nanomaterials, via aerosol, liquid-phase self-assembly and laser-induced self-organization routes, materials characterization and multiscale modeling and simulations have already resulted in high impact research in energy materials. In this regard, future expansion will focus on experimental and theoretical/computational research aimed at novel synthesis/manufacturing routes, photon/electron/ion/phonon transport in novel materials, multiscale biological and synthetic materials and materials for energy storage/release as well as acquisition of instrumentation for time- and space- resolved measurements that will enable the determination of processing-structure-function relationships.