“The Vala Research Award, bestowed biannually and interleaved with a companion Vala Teaching Award, recognizes creativity and originality in research. Research proposals orthogonal to the students current PhD direction are submitted both in writing and as a live presentation are evaluated objectively by a the awards committee. After rigorous competition and scoring, the 2018 recipient of the Vala Research Excellence Award goes to: Yunlu Zhang, from Prof. David Wei?s research group. Yunlu proposed a game-changing idea for the use of Aluminum nanoparticles, coupled with novel passivation and linkage schemes, to enhance Raman spectroscopy and surface catalysis, This concept, if viable, would drastically decrease the cost and increase the availability of SERS substates. Kudos Yunlu!”