Gang Chen is the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering and the director of the MIT Pappalardo Micro/Nano Engineering Laboratory. His research interests center on nanoscale thermal transport and energy conversion phenomena and their applications in energy storage and conversion, thermal management, and water treatment and desalination. He has made important contributions to the understanding of heat transfer in nanostructures and exploited them to develop energy conversion, storage, and water technologies. Chen is fellows of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Research Scientists
Svetlana V. Boriskina obtained her M.Sc. Degree in Radiophysics & Electronics (summa cum laude) and Ph.D. degree in Physics & Mathematics from Kharkov National University (Ukraine). Prior to joining the NanoEngineering group at MIT, Svetlana worked as a NATO/Royal Society Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Nottingham (UK), a Senior Research Scientist at Kharkov National University, and a Research Associate at Boston University. Her research interests include nanophotonics, plasmonics and metamaterials with applications to bio(chemical)sensing, solar energy harvesting and conversion, optical trapping, light generation and near-field heat transfer.
Staff
Keke Xu
ContactKeke Xu is a program managing professional in the group. She has a B.A. in Materials Science and Engineering and a M.S. in Intercultural Relations. Besides provides the administrative support to the group and Professor Chen, she manages the activities for the Center for Mechanical Engineering Research and Education. In addition, she is the research administrator for the PI and manages funding from federal agencies, fellowships, industry, and other.
Past Research Scientists
Professor Keivan Esfarjani received his Engineering degree from the Ecole Centrale de Paris, followed by a DEA in solid state physics from the University of Paris 7. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in theoretical condensed matter physics. Prior to coming to MIT, he held appointments as assistant and then associate professor at the Institute for Materials Research of the Tohoku University, followed by Sharif University, and finally was a visiting associate professor at UC Santa Cruz. In the past he has mainly worked on electronic, mechanical, and transport properties of carbon nanotubes. His research expertise is in electronic structure and materials properties calculations from first-principle density functional theory. His research at MIT was focused on developing a methodology to calculate thermal conductivity from first-principles-derived force fields, and materials design for thermoelectric applications.
Xiaoyuan Chen received a Ph.D. from the University of Strathclyde, UK (1993) and has worked in both academia and industry on semiconductor physics and devices in low dimensional structures. As a research scientist in the NanoEngineering Group, his interests focused on thermoelectrics and energy transfer in low-dimensional structures; photon, phonon and electron interactions in low-dimensional structures; and device applications of these structures.