Michael Sailor

Director
Distinguished Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Professor Sailor is a co-Director of the UC San Diego Institute for Materials Discovery and Design. He holds Affiliate Appointments in the Bioengineering, the Nanoengineering, and the Materials Science and Engineering programs at UC San Diego. Other appointments include: Invited Professor, CNRS Institut Charles Gerhardt in Montpellier, France (2012); Visiting Professor, High Level Talent Program, Key Laboratory of Organosilicon Chemistry and Material Technology, Hangzhou Normal University, China (2018-2020); and Visiting Professor, Zhejiang University, China (2019-2020).

Janka Bond

Assistant Director

Janka has over fifteen years of experience in providing operational, programmatic, and executive-level administrative support in higher education settings. In the various roles she has held at UC San Diego over the past nine years, Janka has engaged in all aspects of managerial, operational, and student affairs functions, including contract and grant administration, donor relations, academic personnel review processes, faculty recognition programs management, creation and implementation of communication strategies, and event planning and coordination. She is a UC San Diego alum with a BA in Sociology with concentration on Culture and Communication.

Andrea Tao

IRG 1: Predictive Assembly
Assoc. Professor, Nanoengineering

Professor Tao joined the NanoEngineering Dept in 2009 where she focused on nanocomposites and plasmonics.  Her interest in materials chemistry piqued in high school while volunteering in the chemistry lab of Michael Sailor. Her thesis focused on the synthesis and assembly of shaped metal nanoparticles. After working with solid-state materials for five years, Tao studying marine proteins in Daniel Morse’s group at UC Santa Barbara. She studied the properties of proteins found in the skin of cephalopods (like squid and octopus) that contribute to the ability of these sea creatures to camouflage themselves.

Jonathan Pokorski

IRG 2: Living Materials
Assoc. Professor, Nanoengineering

Professor Pokorski received his doctoral degree in organic chemistry from Northwestern University in 2007, where he designed, synthesized, and tested diverse peptidomimetic systems for use in medical diagnostics and therapeutics. During postdoctoral training, Dr. Pokorski earned an NIH Ruth Kirschstein fellowship and an NIH Pathway to Independence Award. The Pokorski lab works to bridge chemical synthesis, molecular biology, and materials science to make new materials for biomedical applications. The team is particularly interested in marrying protein and polymer science to generate new materials for drug delivery, imaging, and vaccination.

Nicole Steinmetz

IRG2: Living Materials

Professor Steinmetz started her independent career at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and trained at The Scripps Research Inst. where she was a NIH K99/R00 awardee and AHA post-doctoral fellow; she obtained her PhD in Bionanotechnology from the University of East Anglia where she prepared her dissertation as a Marie Curie Early Stage Training Fellow at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK. Steinmetz is a standing member of the NIH Nanotechnology study section.  She serves on the editorial board of Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIREs) on Nanomedicine and Nanobiotechnology, and on the Advisory Editorial Board for the ACS journal Molecular Pharmaceutics and RSC Journal of Materials Chemistry B.

Tod Pascal

IRG1: Predictive Assembly
Asst. Professor, Nanoengineering & Chemical Engineering

Shirley Meng

Facilities/External
Professor, Nanoengineering and the Materials Science Program

Professor Meng received her Ph.D. in Advanced Materials for Micro & Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005, after which she worked as a postdoc research fellow and became a research scientist at MIT. She currently holds the Zable Endowed Chair Professor in Energy Technologies. She is the founding Director of Sustainable Power and Energy Center (http://spec.ucsd.edu). Her research group – Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC) – focuses on functional nano and micro-scale materials for energy storage and conversion. The more recent programs include the design, synthesis, processing, and operando characterization of energy storage materials in advanced rechargeable batteries; new intercalation materials for sodium ion batteries; and advanced flow batteries for grids large scale storage.

Stacey Brydges

Education and Outreach
Teaching Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Professor Brydges is Vice Chair of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Climate in the Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and an Adjunct Professor of the San Diego State University/UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Mathematics and Science Education. She received her Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from McMaster University in 2003 and served as an associate research scientist and lecturer at Columbia University (2004-2008) before joining UC San Diego. Her program of chemical education research and practice has three major strands: (1) evidence-based chemistry lab and lecture pedagogy and curriculum reform at the introductory level; (2) STEM educator (K-12 teacher, graduate TA, and faculty) socialization, collaboration, and professional development; and (3) programming that advances access to, and retention in, STEM education and careers, particularly for women, underrepresented minorities, and two-year college transfer students.

Sharon Franks

Senior Director, RPDS

Dr. Franks has served UC San Diego since 1993, as the founding director of RPDS since 2008. She has contributed to the success of numerous multi-investigator research initiatives, and to extramural awards totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Franks provides guidance and in-depth support for the development of research proposals to public and private sponsors, across all fields. In addition to major proposal development, Sharon’s foci include professional development for early-career investigators and assistance to those at all levels in identifying and pursuing relevant funding opportunities. Franks holds a Ph.D. in Oceanography from Oregon State University and a B.A. in Earth Sciences from Dartmouth College.