The new ChAMP class was welcomed at our annual summer BBQ on July 15th. Welcome students!

Spring 2022

Assistant Professor of Materials Science of Engineering

Our research goal is to leverage the advanced electron microscopy tools to understand fundamental materials behavior at the atomic level and engineer novel materials with improved properties for real-world applications in nanoscience and nanotechnology, quantum information sciences, and clean energy technologies.

Alex has been awarded the highly competitive NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to study “Emergent Electronic Behavior in Epitaxially-Fused Nanocrystal Superlattices”. He will combine recent breakthroughs in quantum dot film fabrication to create high-performance, stable quantum dot nanocomposites with high energetic order. Quantum dots enable the research of self-assembling materials with unique optoelectronic properties, capable of improving the efficiency of solar cell devices for both space sciences and green energy.

Alex is a first-year graduate student in the Physics PhD program with a concentration in ChAMP (Chemical, Applied, and Materials Physics). Alex has had a strong interest in everything related to physics and astrophysics for as long as he can remember. Alex is an advocate for Neurodiversity in STEM fields. His work as an undergraduate helped inspire the NASA Neurodiversity Network (N3). N3 is a program that provides neurodiverse students, with strong interests and talents in STEM, opportunities for research and mentorship.

Winter 2022

Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

In his research, Maxim Shcherbakov merges fundamental physics concepts and cutting-edge nanotechnology to innovate in the area of photonic devices. Designer nanomaterials offer unprecedented flexibility to manipulate light waves on demand. His group uses a plethora of theoretical and experimental methods to conceive next-generation light-based components to find use in imagers, AR/VR technology, telecommunications and quantum computing.

Winter 2022

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Quantitative single molecule biology and engineering, systems biology, nucleic-acid based therapies, single cell research tool developments

Summer 2021

SungWoo Nam is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Many mechanical deformations, such as buckling, crumpling, wrinkling, collapsing, and delamination, are usually considered as threats to mechanical integrity and are avoided or reduced in the traditional design of materials and structures. Our research goes against these conventions by tailoring such mechanical instabilities to create new functional morphologies. We use ultralow bending stiffness and semiconducting properties of atomically-thin materials to enable emerging mechanically-coupled properties (e.g., quantum emission, exciton localization/condensation, tunable plasmonics, flexoelectricity, etc.) and device-level multi-functionalities that extend beyond those of bulk material systems.

Winter 2021

Jin Yu is an Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy. 

Bio-molecular machines are reminiscent of life’s fundamental delicacies in molecular design. They are made by nano- to micrometer scale protein complexes with cyclic functional cycles of mechano-chemistry, being able to achieve comparatively high energy efficiency and accuracy, and balance well between functions and constraints in cellular environment and under evolution. Our researches have been focused on revealing physical mechanisms underlying some of these protein complexes and machinery.

By utilizing computational biophysics approaches, including a spectrum of molecular modeling and simulation techniques, statistical mechanics, and stochastic methods, we aim at providing insights that would help us to better understand physics of living systems, and also enabling artificial redesign of biomolecular systems for a variety of purposes in bio-medical researches.