George received his education at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana (BSc. Chemistry 2009), North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro (M.S. Chemistry 2015), Purdue University, and West Lafayette (PhD in Inorganic and Material Chemistry, 2020). The focus of his research is on the design, synthesis, and characterization of metastable materials with electronic and magnetic properties as well as electrochemical energy storage. When not in the lab, he enjoys playing tennis, soccer and board games as well as watching movies.
Francis Alcorn
Dr. Francis Alcorn is a postdoc in the Materials Physics group at Sandia National Labs working on novel scanning electron microscopy (SEM) instrumentation to augment understanding of semiconductor surfaces and interfaces, such as recent work on studying MoS2-LaCoO3 interfaces. These include ultrafast electron microscopy to measure fundamental speed limits for semiconductor measurements and secondary electron ‘plume’ imaging for measuring interfacial electric fields that underpin function of semiconductor devices. Dr. Alcorn did his PhD at the University of Illinois, studying atomic scale dynamics in light-absorbing materials with transmission electron microscopy for understanding light-matter interactions
Kenna Ashen
Kenna received their Bachelors in Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M. They are now a graduate researcher in Prof. Qian’s materials theory group at Texas A&M focusing on first-principles calculation of functional and electronic materials, especially exploring the intersection between structural and electronic changes in 2D materials and machine learning-enabled materials discovery. In their free time, they enjoy making art, reading, writing, and historical recreation.
Vahid Attari
Vahid is a Research Assistant Professor of Materials Science at Texas A&M University. He is also Director of Operations at BIRDSHOT center, an HTMDEC Research Center that constitutes a consortium of researchers spanning diverse disciplines across multiple universities aiming for accelerated materials design.
Victor Balcorta
Victor earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at El Paso. In Fall 2021 he joined Dr. Pharr’s group. His research interests focus on using different nanoindentation techniques to understand the chemo-mechanics of energy storage materials. He also contributes to the development of 3D-printed electrode materials for sodium-ion batteries.
Sarbajeet Chakraborty
Sarbajeet received his PhD in Chemistry from Texas A&M University, USA, and his M.Sc. Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, India. His areas of research include the underpinning chemical mechanisms for adjusting the atomic and electronic structure of intercalated metastable polymorphs of V2O5 to design advanced materials for battery cathodes and electrodes for neuromorphic computing. He is particularly interested in dynamic transformations and ion diffusion in correlated systems, with an emphasis on topochemical single-crystal to single-crystal transformations and X-ray diffraction studies.
Publications: Google Scholar
ORCID: 0000-0002-2758-2069
Byoung Ki Choi
Maryam Ghotbi
Maryam received her B.S. in Chemistry from Sharif University of Technology, Iran. Her research Interests include formation and properties of the SEI in lithium metal batteries.
Alice Giem
Alice is a PhD student 4th year at Texas A&M and graduate intern at NREL. Her research interests include leveraging midgap states in semiconductor photocatalysts heterostructures for hydrogen evolution and investigating the role of stereochemically active lone pairs in insertion electrode hosts for mediating fluoride-ion diffusion and for modulating the metal-to-insulator transition of doped MxV2O5 bronzes for neuromorphic computing applications.
Sanjana Goyal
Sanjana is a junior at UC Berkeley majoring in Engineering Physics with a minor in EECS. Their research interests include studying particle interactions in 2D materials. Sanjana is currently conducting research at Sandia National Labs on neuromorphic materials and their nonlinear electrical properties.