Current Visitors and Postdocs
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.
Brian Burg is a postdoctoral fellow in the NanoEngineering Group of MIT. He earned his Doctor of Sciences from ETH Zurich in Switzerland in October 2010. His research focused on the guided assembly of carbon nanostructures with parallel sensor assembly. During his Master's, which he jointly completed at ETH Zurich and MIT, his studies focused on Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies and Renewable Energy Carriers. Currently he is working on enhancing radiative heat transfer by expoiting near-field effects.
Sang Eon received his B.S. and M.S. from Seoul National University and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in Chemical Engineering. Prior to his Ph.D, he was a research scientist at LG Chem working on thin films for liquid crystal displays. He is currently a postdoctoral associate and his research is mainly on the theory of photonic crystals and plasmonics with applications in solar energy harvesting.
Kazuki Ihara is a visiting scholar from Smart Energy Research Laboratories at NEC Corporation in Japan. He received his B.Eng. and M.Eng. in applied chemistry, and Doctor of Engineering in chemical system engineering from Kyushu University in 2002, 2004 and 2007 respectively. His research interests are in the interaction between materials and photon, surface science on nano materials and a development of novel electronic devices. He'd like to understand the behavior of thermal conductance in nano-region for the development of electronic devices with eco-friendly-, energy-harvesting- and nano- technology.
Zhichun is a visiting scholar from the School of Energy and Power Engineering of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST). He received his Ph.D in Engineering Thermophysics in 2006 and became an associate professor in HUST in 2009. His research covers theory and experimental studies in Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) and Capillary Pumped Loop (CPL), application and theory of convective heat transfer enhancement, and heat and mass transfer in PEM fuel cells. At MIT, he works on Monte Carlo simulations of phonon transport in nanostructured dielectric materials.
Lei Ma, a visiting student from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), China, got his bachelor's degree in Engineering School from HUST in 2009. Back at HUST, his research was focused on heat transfer enhancement in tubes with application to various kinds of heat exchangers. Currently he is working on utilizing thermoelectric techniques to recover waste heat from various heat sources.
Anastassios Mavrokefalos is a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He received his B.S., M.S and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in the field of micro/nano scale heat transfer and thermoelectrics. His research is focused on solar/thermal electrical conversion systems.
Selçuk Yerci received his B.S. and M.S. in Physics at Middle East Technical University, where his research focused on spectroscopic investigation of silicon nanocrystals, and his Ph.D. in Computer and Electrical Engineering at Boston University, where his research was mainly on silicon-compatible on-chip light emitters. He is currently a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. His interests are efficient thermoelectric materials and solar cells on a silicon platform.
Mona Zebarjadi is a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. She has defended her Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz in November 2009. She was working with the quantum electronic group supervised by Prof. Ali Shakouri on characterization and simulation of thermoelectric materials. Prior to UCSC, she received her B.S. and M.S. in physics from Sharif University of Technology, Iran in 2002 and 2004, respectively. Her research interests are energy conversion systems both in nano- and micro-scales, especially thermoelectrics, solar cells, and diffusion cells.
Mengyun Zhang is a visiting student from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. She has come to the NanoEngineering Group at MIT to finish her final project to earn her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from HUST. She is working on making a DC-DC converter which will transform high currents into high voltages, a project which is important for thermoelectric devices.
Past Visitors and Postdocs
Amador was a visiting scholar from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Universidad de Santiago de Chile, where he is currently a Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Amador earned his Mechanical Engineer degree from Universidad de Santiago de Chile and his Ph.D. (1995) from Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests are in the field of solar (and other sources of) energy conversion to thermal and electric energy by thermoelectric materials. His main interests are the use of theoretical and numerical techniques for determining thermoelectric properties such as thermal conductivity in composites and other nanostructures. In the NanoEngineering Group, Amador worked on understanding theoretical models based on an effective medium theory for predicting and determining effective properties, and its correlation to experimental means and data for determining effective properties.
Tengfei Luo was a postdoctoral associate in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He received his B.S. (2005) from Xi'an Jiaotong University and his Ph.D. (2009) from Michigan State University. At MIT, Tengfei worked on Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations of thermal energy transport across different materials interfaces, as well as MD simulations of thermal energy transport across polymer-solid interfaces.
Nitin obtained his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 2009. His doctoral research involved studying thermal transport across solid-solid and solid-liquid interfaces. In the NanoEngineering Group, Nitin's research focused mainly on nanoscale heat transport and pump-probe measurements
Weitao Dai received his B. S. degree in Optics from the University of Science & Technology of China (2000) and Ph.D. in condensed matter physics from Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University (2009). He was a post-doc with the NanoEngineering Group at MIT, focusing on numeric simulations of electromagnetic waves. After the NanoEngineering Group, Weitao became a post-doc at Boston College, working with Prof. Willie Padilla.
Shuo Chen was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. She received her M.S. (2002) from Peking University and Ph.D. (2006) from Boston College in Physics. In 2006-2009 she worked as a postdoctoral associate in the electrochemical energy lab at MIT. In the NanoEngineering group she worked on synthesis and electron microscopy studies of nanomaterials, and structural and transport properties of thermoelectric materials. Shuo has moved on to a research associate position at Boston College, where she is working on synthesis, structural and electrical and thermal properties of thermoelectric nanocomposites. Her other research fields include fundamental studies and applications of energy conversion and storage materials and devices such as electrocatalysis in fuel cells and electrodes for batteries and supercapacitors.
Shien-Ping Feng received his Ph.D. in electrochemistry and chemical mechanical polishing in chemical engineering from National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan (2003-2008). He also worked on the fabrication of semiconductors via thin film processes at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (2001-2008). After that, he attended Tripod Hsinchu Lab, where he worked on nano-particle research for dye-sensitized solar cells (2008-2009). Shien-Ping Feng has recently been appointed as an assistant professor at Hong Kong University. He works on electrochemical nanoengineering to solve the interface contact problem in thermoelectric devices and supercapacitors.
Stephan received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in 2009. During his Master's studies, Stephan worked in the Laboratory for Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies (LTNT) under Prof. Dimos Poulikakos in the field of submicron printing. As a visiting student, Stephan explored a solvent-based desalination technique. After his time at MIT, Stephan returned to ETH to pursue his Ph.D.
Prof. Junichiro Shiomi was a visiting scholar from 2010 to 2011. He received the B.E. from Tohoku University, and Ph. D. from Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden. He is an Associate Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tokyo. His research interests include heat conduction of nanomaterials, polymer composites, and thermoelectrics, phase change and fluidics in nanoscale, interfacial thermofluid dynamics, and thermal convections.
Dr. Bhaskaran Muralidharan completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. His Ph.D. work was in the area of non-equilibrium quantum transport in the strongly correlated regime. His research interests in the NanoEngineering group focused on the fundamental understanding of non-equilibrium phenomena such as charge and heat flow in nanoscale systems, and their applications to thermoelectric energy conversion.
Jae Sik Jin was a member of the NanoEngineering Group at MIT as a postdoctoral associate from October 2009 until January 2011. He received his Ph.D. degree in numerical analysis of micro/nanoscale energy transport in silicon devices from Seoul National University in 2007. His research focused on establishing theoretical models and numerical simulations of thermal energy transfer in thermal interface materials and nanostructures.
Nuo Yang was a postdoctoral associate from 2009 to 2010 in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He earned his B.S. degree in applied physics from the University of Science & Technology of China (2000), his M.E. in accelerator physics from the Chinese Academy of Science (2003), and his Ph. D in Physics from the National University of Singapore (2009). His research is focused on thermoelectrics and thermal transportation in low-dimensional structures and thermal interface materials.
Yann Chalopin was a postdoctoral associate from 2009 to 2010 with the NanoEngineering Group. He received his M.S. (2006) in solid state physics and Ph.D. (2009) from Ecole Centrale Paris. Yann is currently a CNRS research scientist at Ecole Centrale Paris. His research interests include the theoretical aspects of nanoscale energy transport and conversion (nano-optics, nanoscale heat transport) and the development of computational methods to study physical properties of low-dimensional systems.
Yiqun Zhang was a visiting student (01/2009-06/2010) from the department of physics, Nanjing University, China. He received his B.S. in 2005 in Nanjing University. His research focused on the thermoelctric properties of nanostructures.
Christine was a visiting student from the Institute of Thermodynamics, TU Braunschweig, Germany. She received her diploma in biological engineering at the TU Braunschweig in 2006. Her current research is focused on the application of thermoelectric systems.
Professor Ruiting Zheng was a visiting scholar from the Institute of Low Energy Nuclear Physics, Beijing Normal University, China. His research field covers preparation nanowires, thin films and materials modification with the aid of ion beams. In the NanoEngineering Group, he worked on heat transfer enhancement in nanofluids systems and nanowire measurement.
Professor Huanxin Chen is a visiting scholar (Oct. 2008 - Oct. 2009) from the School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. His current research is focused on thermoelectric refrigeration and energy savings.
Jinwei Gao was a visiting student (9/2007~9/2009) from the School of Chemical & Energy Engineering at the South China University of Technology (Guangzhou. P.R.China). Jinwei worked on nanofluid heat transfer enhancement and thermal characterization of polymers.
Aaron has a B.S. (2002), M.S. (2004), and Ph.D. (2008) in mechanical engineering from MIT. He is a recipient of the Warren M. Rohsenow Fellowship from the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT, and graduate research fellowships from the NSF and Department of Defense. His Ph.D. research was on the development of ultrafast optical methods for characterizing thermal transport in solids, liquids and nanostructures. Aaron will be joining the faculty at Boston University after a collaboration with the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) in Abu Dhabi and a post-doc at the University of Michigan.
Matteo Chiesa has recently been appointed as an assistant professor at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) in Abu Dhabi. Matteo has worked for SINTEF Petroleum and Energy, as well as for Vetco Aibel where he was a Senior Technical Advisor. Matteo Chiesa received his PhD in the field of Applied Mechanics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2001.
Shinichiro Nakamura is a visiting scientist from Japan. He has a Master's degree in the field of polymer science from Hokkaido University. He studied low-dimensional thermoelectric and energy conversion technology and nanowire growth and measurement.
Daryoosh Vashaee is a postdoctoral associate in mechanical engineering at MIT. He received his Ph.D. on nanoscale charge and energy transport in electrical engineering from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) in September, 2004. Prior to UCSC, he earned his BS in electrical engineering (electronics) from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran in 1993 and his MS in electrical engineering (communications) from Amirkabir University of Technology in 1995. After three years of experience working on RF Engineering, Daryoosh joined UC-Santa Barbara and worked on the fabrication and processing of InGaAs/InGaAsP based thin film thermoelectric devices. His research interests are on theoretical and experimental investigation of energy materials and devices, nano and micro-scale charge and energy transport, thermoelectric/thermionic energy conversion, and integrated micro-refrigeration. He is the winner of the 2004 Goldsmid Award for Research Excellence in Thermoelectrics from the International Thermoelectric Society (ITS News).
Professor Yong Tae Kang is a visiting scholar (Sep. 01, 2006 - Aug. 31, 2007) from the School of Mechanical and Industrial Systems Engineering, Kyung Hee University, Korea. He works on nanofluids, heat and mass transfer enhancement in binary mixtures and micro/nano scale energy conversion systems.
From June 2006 to December 2006, Professor Dongsheng Zhu is a senior visiting scholar from the School of Chemical & Energy Engineering at the South China University of Technology (Guangzhou. P.R.China), working on nanofluids heat transfer enhancement and Saving Energy.
Masayuki Takashiri
Masayuki Takashiri was a visiting scientist from the Komatsu Corporation in Japan, from March 2002 until September 2003. He was involved in the development of thin film power generators.
Ming-Shan Jeng
Ming-Shan Jeng was a visiting scholar from the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan. He worked on Monte Carlo simulations of nanocomposites.
Jinbo Wang
Professor Jinbo Wang is the Vice Dean at the School of Environmental Engineering in the Huzahong University of Science and Technology. He was a visiting scholar from April 2002 until June 2004, working on electrostatic cooling and transport in nanofluids.
De-Kui Qing
De-Kui Qing was a postdoctoral researcher, studying electromagnetic metamaterials and the optical properties of nanostructures.
Sebastian Volz
Sebastian Volz was a postdoctoral researcher from France. His research was on molecular dynamics simulations of the thermal conductivity of silicon crystal.
Koji Miyazaki
From September 2000 and August 2002, Professor Koji Miyazaki was a visiting scholar from the mechanical engineering department at the Kyushu Institute of Technology. Koji's research was on microbubble generation.
Alexandre Jacquot
Alexandre Jacquot was a visiting Ph.D. student from Laboroire de Physique des Materiaux (LPM), Ecole Nationale Superieur des Mines de Nancy. He worked on the fabrication of thermoelectric thin film devices.