journal of materials chemistry c -...

This journal is©The Royal Society of Chemistry 2018 J. Mater. Chem. C, 2018, 6, 11771--11777 | 11771

Cite this: J.Mater. Chem. C, 2018,

6, 11771

Journal of Materials Chemistry C profiles:Contributors to the Emerging Investigators2018 issue

Journal of Materials Chemistry C is proud to present this themed issue highlighting 2018’s rising stars of

materials chemistry in the areas of optical, magnetic and electronic devices. Our 2018 Emerging

Investigators themed issues gather some of the best research being conducted by scientists in the early

stages of their independent career. Each contributor was recommended as carrying out work with the

potential to influence future directions in materials chemistry. Congratulations to all of the researchers

featured, we hope you enjoy reading this issue.

Dr Raffaella Buonsanti is a tenure-trackAssistant Professor at the Institute ofChemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC)of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale deLausanne (EPFL). She received her MScdegree in Chemistry from the Universityof Bari in 2006. In 2010, she obtained herPhD in Nanochemistry from the Univer-sity of Salento working at the NationalNanotechnology Laboratory (NNL, in Lecce-Italy). After two years as a postdoctoralresearcher at the Molecular Foundry atLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory(2010–2012), she was promoted to ProjectScientist, a non-tenure track scientist posi-tion, in the same institution. From 2013 to2015 Raffaella was a tenure-track StaffScientist in the Department of MaterialsScience within the Joint Center for ArtificialPhotosynthesis at LBNL, before moving to

EPFL. Here, through her core expertise incolloidal synthesis, she develops novelapproaches to complex materials to drivechemical transformations, with particularemphasis on energy-related reactions suchas CO2 reduction and water oxidation.

Keith Butler was born in obscurity in thefoothills of Dublin, Ireland. At the age of 12he entered education in a local monasterywhere he was given an educationalgrounding in geometry and theology.In early adulthood Keith then enteredTrinity College, in the metropolitan heartof Ireland’s capital, there he expandedhis education and first sparked an intereston the study of converting the phases ofmatter. After finishing his degree Keithspent some years in obscurity, travellingand writing impenetrable prose and awfulpoetry. After a Damascene re-conversion,

Keith returned to his study of matter, thistime exploring exotic porous structures inUniversity College London. After spendingtime working on the theory of machinesfor converting sunlight into electricity inBath and Sheffield, Keith joined the ISISNeutron and Muon Source at RutherfordAppleton Laboratories. His interest inthe structure of materials continues; hisresearch now focuses on the collisionsbetween sub-atomic particles and materials,to gain a deeper understanding of structureand dynamics. He develops thinkingautomata to assist human interpretationof these processes.

Dr Cristina Cebrian is an Assistant Professorat the University of Lorraine (France). Shestudied Chemistry at the University ofCastilla-La Mancha (Spain), where shealso received her PhD in 2011 under the

DOI: 10.1039/c8tc90219d

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Journal ofMaterials Chemistry C

PROFILE

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11772 | J. Mater. Chem. C, 2018, 6, 11771--11777 This journal is©The Royal Society of Chemistry 2018

supervision of Prof. A. Dıaz-Ortiz andDr P. Prieto. During her doctoral studies,she made short visits to the groups ofProf. F. P. Cossıo (University of the BasqueCountry, Spain) and Prof. L. De Cola(University of Munster, Germany). After apost-doctoral fellowship in De Cola’sgroup (2012–2013) between the Universityof Munster and the University of Strasbourg(Institut de Science et d’Ingenierie Supra-moleculaires, France), she obtained hercurrent position at the UL in 2013. Herresearch interests include the synthesisof organic and organometallic materialsfor optoelectronics and solar energy conver-sion, with special attention to sustainablesynthetic approaches and challengingphotoactive systems based on non-toxicand alternative metals.

Dr Zheng Chen is an assistant professorin the Department of NanoEngineering andMaterials Science Program at University ofCalifornia, San Diego. He received his BSfrom Tianjin University (2007) and PhDfrom UCLA (2012, with Prof. Yunfeng Lu),both in Chemical Engineering. Then heserved as postdoctoral researcher with Prof.Zhenan Bao and Prof. Yi Cui at StanfordUniversity. His research interests lie inthe design, synthesis and application ofnovel functional polymers, nanostructuredmaterials, and their hybrid materialsfor electronic, energy and environmentalapplications.

Dr Takayuki Chiba is an assistant professorin the Graduate School of Organic MaterialsScience at Yamagata University, Japan.He received his PhD in 2011 from theDepartment of Organic Device Engineeringat Yamagata University. He was a post-doctoral fellow at Yamagata Universityin 2011–2014. His research is focused onperovskite QD-based light-emitting devices.

Dr Simone Fabiano is an Assistant Pro-fessor at the Department of Science andTechnology at Linkoping University. Hereceived his MSc degree in IndustrialChemistry from the University of Catania(2008), and a PhD in Chemistry from theUniversity of Palermo (2012). He thencarried out postdoctoral research atLinkoping University with Prof. MagnusBerggren, before joining the group ofProf. Antonio Facchetti and Prof. TobinJ. Marks at Northwestern University as aMarie Curie Fellow and a VINNEMERFellow in 2016. His research interestsinclude organic semiconductors and electro-lyte dielectrics for thin-film transistors, aswell as conducting polymers for energyharvesting and storage applications.

Dr Marina Freitag is presently AssistantProfessor at the Department of Chemistryat Uppsala University, continuing herwork in coordination chemistry and solarcells. Previously, she held a post-doctoralposition at EPFL (Prof. Anders Hagfeldt’s).She received her PhD degree with Prof.Galoppini at Rutgers University, USA, andher BSc in Chemistry at Freie UniversitatBerlin, Germany. She is the inventor ofthe so-called Zombie cell and she con-tributed to recent breakthroughs indye-sensitized solar cells for low-powerapplications.

Dr Ori Gidron received his MSc in Chemistryfrom the Weizmann Institute of Science(2007) under the supervision of ProfessorM. van der Boom. He then joined the groupof Professor M. Bendikov at the WeizmannInstitute of Science and received his PhDin 2012, for which he was awarded theDov-Elad Prize for Excellence in ChemicalResearch. In June 2013, he started a MarieCurie (IEF) Postdoctoral Fellowship inthe group of Professor F. Diederich atETH Zurich working on supramolecularassemblies of carbon-rich materials.

Profile Journal of Materials Chemistry C

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He has been a senior lecturer at the HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem since 2015. His maininterests are chiral organic semiconductors,curved aromatic systems, and furan-containing materials for organic electronics.

Dr Shuzo Hirata received his PhD fromTokyo University of Agriculture and Techno-logy in 2009 under Prof. ToshiyukiWatanabe. In 2009, he joined Prof. ChihayaAdachi’s group at Kyushu University as aPostdoctoral Fellow. In 2012, he became anAssistant Professor in the Department ofMaterials Science at the Tokyo Institute ofTechnology, working under Prof. MartinVacha. His independent research career inthe Department of Engineering Science atthe University of Electro-Communicationbegan in 2018. His group works onthe design of photofunctional molecules/materials for photonics and optoelectronicsapplications with a focus on the intrinsicunderstanding of how molecular photo-physics controls molecular excited states.

Dr Sahika Inal is an Assistant Professorof Bioscience at King Abdullah Universityof Science and Technology (KAUST).

Trained as a textile engineer, she receivedher MSc in Polymer Science and PhD inExperimental Physics from the Universityof Potsdam in Germany. Prior to joiningKAUST, she was a postdoctoral fellow inthe Department of Bioelectronics at theCenter of Microelectronics of Provence ofEMSE in France. Having made a varietyof devices from conjugated polymers indifferent parts of the world, Sahika isdetermined to uncover the wonders ofthese materials at the liquid interface forrecording small biological signals andmodulating biological events.

Dr Dinesh Kabra is at present an AssociateProfessor in the Department of Physics atIIT Bombay, Mumbai, India. Before joiningIITB, he was a Herchel Smith ResearchFellow in the Cavendish Laboratory andalso an honorary postdoctoral fellowof Trinity Hall College, University ofCambridge, UK. He received his PhDfrom JNCASR, Bangalore, India. He haspublished B70 international publicationsand B10 international/national patentsin the area of active matrix displays, flexiblePV panels and nanogenerators. He is arecipient of an Early Research AchieverAward 2015 and Best Paper Award 2016 ofIIT Bombay. His current research interestsinvolve solution processable inorganic andorganic semiconductors in order to under-stand their structure–function relationshipsvia spectroscopy and to transfer that knowl-edge to the design of high performanceoptoelectronic devices.

Dr Chenfeng Ke is currently an assistantprofessor in the Department of Chemistryat Dartmouth College, New Hampshire,United States. He received his BS and PhDdegrees from Nankai University, China, in2004 and 2009, respectively. In 2007–2008, he worked with Professor YoshihisaInoue at Osaka University, Japan. He wasawarded a Newton International Fellow-ship in 2009 by the Royal Society (UK) topursue research with Professor AnthonyDavis between 2009 and 2011 at the Uni-versity of Bristol. He subsequently joinedProfessor Sir Fraser Stoddart’s researchgroup at Northwestern University as a post-doctoral research fellow (2011–2015) beforetaking up his assistant professorship.

Dr Kathryn E. Knowles earned a BS inChemistry and a BA in Math from theUniversity of Rochester, NY in 2008. Shecompleted a PhD in chemistry in 2013 asa US Department of Energy Office of ScienceGraduate Fellow with Emily Weiss at North-western University, where she studied theinfluence of surface ligands on the decay ofphotogenerated charge carriers in colloidalquantum dots. She conducted postdoctoral

Journal of Materials Chemistry C Profile

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research investigating the photophysicsof transition metal-doped quantum dotswith Daniel Gamelin at the University ofWashington with the support of a DOEEnergy Efficiency and Renewable EnergyPostdoctoral Research Award. In 2016,she returned to her hometown institution,the University of Rochester, as an AssistantProfessor of Chemistry. Research in theKnowles group focuses on the synthesisand investigation of the fundamentaloptical, electronic, and chemical proper-ties of binary and ternary transition metaloxide nanocrystals and thin films, with afocus on materials that have potentialapplications in solar energy conversionand storage.

Dr Wen-Ya Lee is an assistant Professorof Chemical Engineering and Biotech-nology at National Taipei University ofTechnology (NTUT). He received his PhDdegree in Chemical Engineering fromNational Taiwan University in 2009 andjoined Prof. Wen-Chang Chen’s group asa postdoc researcher in 2010. Prior tojoining NTUT, he continued his postdocresearch and worked with Prof. ZhenanBao at Stanford University from 2012to 2014. He is devoted in the field oforganic electronic materials. His presentresearch interests cover field-effect tran-sistors, nonvolatile memory, wearableelectronics and solution printing techniques.

Dr Benoit H. Lessard was appointed asan Assistant Professor in the Departmentof Chemical & Biological Engineering atUniversity of Ottawa, (Ontario, Canada)in May 2015. Since then he has beenawarded the Tier 2 Canada ResearchChair in Advanced Polymer Materialsand Organic Electronics and the 2015Charles Polanyi Prize in Chemistry. Prof.Lessard was also awarded one of the 2017Emerging Leaders of Chemical EngineeringPlenary Presentation at Canadian ChemicalEngineering Society, 67th Annual Con-ference (Edmonton, AB). Prior to joiningthe University of Ottawa, Prof. Lessard com-pleted a NSERC Banting Fellowship atthe University of Toronto studying crystalengineering and OPV/OLED fabrication.Prior to that he completed his PhD inpolymer chemistry and reaction engineeringat McGill University, where he was awardedthe NSERC Alexander Graham Bell CGS aswell as the MSED-LANXESS PhD thesisaward in polymer science. Since 2008,Prof. Lessard has published 53 peer reviewjournal articles, 6 patent applications,and 1 book chapter and has presentedhis work at over 54 international andnational conferences.

Dr Hanying Li is the Qiushi Distin-guished Professor in the Departmentof Polymer Science and Engineering atZhejiang University, China. In December2009, he completed his PhD degree atCornell University in the field of materialsscience and engineering (advisor: Prof. LaraA. Estroff). After postdoctoral work onorganic electronics at Stanford University(Prof. Zhenan Bao’s group), Hanying Limoved to Zhejiang University in December2011. His current research focuses on bio-inspired single-crystal growth and organicsingle-crystal-based electronic and opto-electronic devices such as transistors andsolar cells.

Dr Stephen Morin has been an AssistantProfessor in the Department of Chemistryat The University of Nebraska – Lincolnsince 2013. His research interest include:materials chemistry, nano-/microscaleassembly, nanomaterials synthesis andcharacterization, adaptive materials, softrobotics, hybrid materials systems, andbottom-up fabrication. He completedhis BS in Chemistry at The University ofTexas at Austin in 2004 and his PhD in


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Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin –Madison in 2011, under the direction ofProfessor Song Jin. His research focused onthe rational synthesis and assembly ofnanomaterials based on fundamental con-cepts of crystal nucleation and growth. In2011 Stephen joined the lab of ProfessorGeorge M. Whitesides at Harvard Universityas a postdoctoral fellow. At Harvard,Stephen conducted research in the areasof soft robotics and adaptive materials.Since joining Nebraska, he has beenawarded a 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award(2015) and an NSF CAREER Award (2016).

James Neilson (Department of Chem-istry, Colorado State University) and hisgroup are interested in selective solid-statesynthetic chemistry and in establishingstructure-dynamics-properties relationshipsfor new functional electronic materials.James Neilson attended Lehigh Universityfor his undergraduate studies in MaterialsScience & Engineering (2006) and followedhis interest in making materials to theUniversity of California Santa Barbarawhere he completed his doctoral research(2011) on understanding the influenceof kinetics of hydrolysis on the atomicstructures of materials, as inspired bybiomineralization and supervised by Prof.Daniel Morse. During his postdoctoralwork at Johns Hopkins University, in theDepartments of Chemistry and Physics &Astronomy and at the Institute for QuantumMatter with Prof. Tyrel McQueen, he workedon elucidating the structure-property rela-tionships of strongly-correlated electronicmaterials. In 2013, he joined the faculty ofColorado State University.

Dr Jean-Hubert Olivier is originally fromStrasbourg (France) and attended theUniversity of Strasbourg where he obtainedhis MSc in Organic and SupramolecularChemistry. During his PhD work at theUniversity of Strasbourg, he developednew classes of luminescent liquid crystalsand studied light–matter interactions inhierarchical materials. He then moved toDuke University in 2011 as a postdoctoralassociate and engineered polymer-wrappedcarbon nanotube materials for solar energycapture and conversion. As an AssistantProfessor in the Department of Chemistryat University of Miami, he is creating newclasses of structure–function optimizedorganic materials constructed from outof-equilibrium intermediates. In additionto elucidating fundamental electronicprocesses in these emerging materials, hisresearch program targets applications insolar energy capture and conversion,mechanical energy harvesting, tactile sen-sors, and organic electronics.

Dr Caofeng Pan received his BS degree(2005) and his PhD (2010) in MaterialsScience and Engineering from Tsinghua

University, China. Then he joined thegroup of Professor Zhong Lin Wang atthe Georgia Institute of Technology as apostdoctoral fellow. He is currently aprofessor and a group leader at BeijingInstitute of Nanoenergy and Nano-systems, Chinese Academy of Sciences,since 2013. His research interests mainlyfocus on the fields of piezotronics/piezophototronics for fabricating newelectronic and optoelectronic devices.Details can be found at http://www.piezotronic.cn/.

Dr Abhijit Patra was born in West Bengal,India and received his early educationthere. He obtained his BSc and MSc degreesin Chemistry from the University ofBurdwan, Bardhaman and working underthe supervision of Prof. T. P. Radhakrishnan,his PhD degree from the University ofHyderabad in 2009. Following a post-doctoral stint with Prof. Keitaro Nakataniin PPSM, ENS Cachan, France, he movedto the University of Wuppertal, Germanyas an Alexander von Humboldt fellowin the group of Prof. Ullrich Scherf.Currently, he is working as an AssociateProfessor in the Department of Chemistry,Indian Institute of Science Education andResearch Bhopal (IISERB). His researchinterests span various domains and facets ofporous polymers their multifunctionalapplications in carbon dioxide fixation,photocatalysis, light harvesting and energystorage and optical materials based onmolecular and polymeric assemblies atthe nano/microscale.


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http://www.piezotronic.cn/

http://www.piezotronic.cn/



Dr Anna Regoutz is an Imperial CollegeResearch Fellow in the Department ofMaterials at Imperial College London anda Visiting Scientist at Diamond LightSource. Her work uses advanced X-rayspectroscopy methods to understandthe surfaces and interfaces vital to thebehaviour of new generations of electronicdevices. She received her DI in TechnicalChemistry (2010) from TU Graz, Austria,and her DPhil in Inorganic Chemistry(2014) from the University of Oxford, UK.Her ultimate motivation is to bridge the gapbetween the fundamental understanding ofelectronic structure and the development ofnovel device concepts. Besides the solidstate, she particularly enjoys soft matter inthe form of gardening and distilled blueagave extract.

Dr Simon Rondeau-Gagne received hisPhD in chemistry from Universite Laval,Quebec, Canada, in 2014 under theguidance of Prof. Jean-François Morin.The same year, he joined the Departmentof Chemical Engineering at Stanford Uni-versity, California, USA, as a postdoctoralresearch fellow where he worked on the

development of new materials for skin-inspired electronics under the supervi-sion of Zhenan Bao. In 2016, he movedto the University of Windsor as an Assis-tant Professor where his current researchactivities focus on the development ofnovel strategies toward nanostructuredconjugated polymers, with innovativeproperties such as stretchability, self-healing, mechanical compliance andnear-infrared absorption.

Dr Davita L. Watkins obtained her Bachelorof Science in Chemistry from VanderbiltUniversity. After working for a bioanalyticalcompany, she obtained a PhD in Chemistryfrom the University of Memphis underthe tutelage of Dr Tomoko Fujiwara. As adoctoral candidate, she developed andestablished multi-step synthetic methodsfor a series of stimuli-responsive moleculesand polymeric materials. As a postdoctoralresearcher at the University of Florida withDr Ronald K. Castellano, she developednovel self-assembling organic materialsfor photovoltaic applications. In 2014, shebegan her independent career at the Uni-versity of Mississippi. Her research focuseson establishing design principles towardsnovel functional materials with tunableproperties through molecular self-assembly.She is a recipient of the Oak RidgeAssociated Universities (ORAU) Ralph E.Powe Award (2015) and a 2018 AmericanChemical Society Young Investigator (ACSPOLY-PMSE). In 2017, she earned a NationalScience Foundation CAREER Award tocatalyze the growth and sustainability ofher novel research program that exploitssigma–hole interactions to optimize organicelectronic materials. Alongside her researchefforts, she has been an active voice for

initiatives to increase minorities and womenin STEM.

Dr Ruoxue Yan received her PhD degree inChemistry from UC Berkeley in 2010 underthe supervision of Prof. Peidong Yang,where her research was focused on nano-wire photonics and plasmonics. Then shecontinued to serve as a postdoc researcherin Laurence Berkeley National Lab, whereshe worked on spectroscopic studies ofheterogeneous artificial photosynthesisreactions using nanoplasmonic platforms.She is currently a tenure-track assistantprofessor at the Department of Chemicaland Environmental Engineering at theUniversity of California, Riverside and arecipient of an NSF CAREER Award forthe development of advanced chemicalimaging spectroscopy using photonic andplasmonic nanowires. Her research isfocused on high performance nanomaterialsfor advanced photonics, electronics, andbiological applications.

Dr Zhibin Yu is an assistant professor ofIndustrial and Manufacturing Engineeringat Florida State University. He received his


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PhD from the Materials Science andEngineering Department at UCLA and didpostdoctoral training in the ElectricalEngineering Department at UC Berkeley.Dr Yu’s research interests focus on thesynthesis, processing and manufacturingof composites for large scale electronicsand optics. Dr Yu is a recipient of the2016 YIP award from the Air Force Officeof Scientific Research. His students hadwon many prestigious awards includingthe NSF Graduate Fellowship, and theDoD SMART Scholarship.

Li-Dong Zhao is a full Professor of MaterialsScience and Engineering at Beihang Univer-sity, China. He received his BE and MEdegrees in Materials Science from LiaoningTechnical University and his PhD degree inMaterials Science from University of Scienceand Technology Beijing, China, in 2009. Hewas a postdoctoral research fellow in theICMMO at University of Paris-Sud from 2009to 2011 and continued as a postdoctoralresearch fellow in the Department of Chem-istry at Northwestern University from 2011to 2014. His research interests include thefabrication and characterizations of layeredstructural thermoelectrics, superconductors,and thermal barrier coatings.

Dr Jing Zhao obtained her PhD fromNorthwestern University in 2008, underthe supervision of Prof. Richard VanDuyne and Prof. George Schatz. Shethen joined Moungi Bawendi’s lab atMassachusetts Institute of Technologyas a postdoctoral researcher. She was anassistant professor in the ChemistryDepartment at University of Connecticutsince August 2012 and has been promotedto associate professor in August 2018. She isalso a member of the Institute of MaterialsScience at UConn. Her research interestincludes the synthesis of metal and semi-conductor nanocrystals, optical spectro-scopy, single particle spectroscopy,photocatalysis, biological sensing andimaging. She was awarded the Spectro-scopy Society of Pittsburgh Starter Grantin 2014 and NSF CAREER award in 2016.

Dr Zujin Zhao received his BS degree in2003 and PhD degree in 2008 in chemistryfrom Zhejiang University. From 2008–2010, he conducted his postdoctoral workunder the supervision of Prof. Ben ZhongTang at The Hong Kong University ofScience & Technology. Now, he is a full

professor at the South China University ofTechnology. In 2018, he becomes a Fellow ofthe Royal Society of Chemistry. His currentresearch is mainly focused on the develop-ment of functional organic materials, andthe exploration of their applications inorganic light-emitting diodes, moleculardevices and bioimaging.

Dr Yunlong Zi is an Assistant Professorin the Department of Mechanical andAutomation Engineering at the ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong. He received hisPhD from Purdue University in 2014; andhis BEng from Tsinghua University in2009. Before joining CUHK, he workedas a Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Instituteof Technology between 2014–2017. Hiscurrent research interests focus on high-efficiency mechanical energy harvest-ing through triboelectric nanogenerators(TENG), TENG-trigger process and devices,and self-powered systems. He was honoredas a winner of MRS Postdoctoral Award bythe Materials Research Society in 2017, asthe first recipient from Georgia Tech.


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