Mayank Jhalaria and Mounica Divvela successfully defended their MS thesis in July. Mayank joined the PhD Program in Chemical Engineering at Columbia University in September, and Mounica moved on to our PhD Program, continuing working on the mesoscale modeling of gas-assisted electrospinning and air-controlled electrospray.

Brian Williams also successfully defended his PhD thesis in August. He joined Axium Nano where he works on the development of mesoporous carbon materials and flexible Li-S batteries.

Dr. Seung Wan Kim joined the group as a postdoc in September. He received his PhD in Materials Science & Engineering at KAIST in 2011. Before he joined the group, he worked in the Open Innovation Team and Technology Planning Group at Samsung SDI as senior research engineer and project manager for LIB anode development for five years. He will take over Dr. Ling Fei’s work on silicon/graphene hybrid anode materials.

Christopher Klaassen, 1st year PhD student, joined the group. Chris received his BS in chemical engineering from Texas Tech Universiity, and will be working on creating synergy between graphene and redox mediator for Li-air battery cathodes.

Rui Zhang and Snatika Sarkar, 1st year MS students, also joined the group. Rui will work on flexible Li-S batteries based on directly deposited sulfur containing block copolymer and reduced graphene oxide, and Snatika will work on the chemical modification of mesoporous carbon nanofibers for energy storage applications.

Andrew Shah, 3rd year PhD student in the group, received the Outstanding Graduate TA of the Year Award this year. Andrew TAed ChemE 3320, Analysis of Separation Processes, in the Spring semester. This TA of the Year Award is chosen by the undergraduates and faculty in the department.

The poster on Photo/stress/time Sensitive Nanomaterials for Webbing Products by Mani Korah, Hongshen Liu and Zhenia Zhmayev in the group has been selected as the 1st place at the CCMR Symposium Poster Competition on May 27. The best poster was chosen by the industrial participants of the Symposium and Cornell faculty.

Soshana Smith successfully defended her PhD thesis in May. She will start working at Axium Nano in July where she will develop polymer-ceramic hybrid separators for Li-ion batteries.

Willy Halim, new MS student in the department, joined the group. Willy received his MEng degree from the Department in May, and started working on the controlling micro and meso pores in conductive carbon for Li-sulfur battery cathode application.