2022-23 MRSEC Students and Postdoctoral Researchers

ORCID: 0009-0002-6693-8547
PI: Josh Figueroa (Lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: catalysis, nickel, aminosilanes, disilanes, dehydrocoupling, imine hydrosilylation

Sean Dunphy is a PhD candidate in the lab of Dr. Figueroa at UCSD in San Diego, California. Prior to attending UCSD, he earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Ohio State University. His current work is focused on identifying more efficient pathways towards precursors for the microelectronics industry. Specifically, much of his research has been focused on two main areas: 1) catalytic hydrosilylation of imines as a method for aminosilane synthesis and 2) rapid and selective homocoupling of arylsilanes mediated by nickel.

ORCID: 0009-0009-2130-3290
PI: Zhaowei Liu (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Jie is in Electrical and Computer Engineering department of the Jacobs School of Engineering, whose research focus is on plasmonic enhanced light source and optoelectronic device.

ORCID: 
PI: Monica Allen (Lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: nanofabrication, quantum materials, scanning probe microscopy

Lingyuan Lyu is pursuing a PhD in Physics at UC San Diego, and she is now part of Professor Monica Allen’s lab. Her research focuses on van der Waals heterostructures, including graphene, twisted transition-metal dichalcogenides, and metal-organic framework hybrids. By combining nanofabrication, device engineering, and microwave impedance microscopy, her work explores correlated and topological quantum phases at the nanoscale.

ORCID: 0000-0002-9344-6313
PI: Shengqiang Cai (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: Fracture analysis, lattice structures, FEA methods

Ram is a Ph.D. student in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department, working in the Cai group at UC San Diego. He earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. His research focuses on investigating instabilities in soft lattice structures through computational methods, with an emphasis on fracture analysis under large deformation conditions.

ORCID: 
PI: Hao Su (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Shresth is a graduate student in Computer Science and Engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering. His research focuses on developing foundational models for robotics.

ORCID: 0009-0006-0360-7563
PI: Abdoulayeh Ndao (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: Phase Change Materials, Optical Switching, Tunable Optics

Guli Gulinihali is pursuing a PhD in Electrical Engineering at UC San Diego. She earned her B.S. in General Engineering and Mathematics from Baylor University. She is now part of Abdoulaye Ndao's Lab, where her research focuses on Phase-change Materials (PCM) and their use in tunable optics and optical switching applications.

ORCID: 0000-0001-9835-7136
PI: Nicholas Boechler (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Nicolas is a Ph.D student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department, researching stimuli-responsive metamaterial systems in Prof. Boechler's lab. Nicolas received his B.S in Materials Science and a minor in Mathematics from the University of Arizona in 2020. He is the recipient of a ORAU Journeyman Fellowship through the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Research Associateship Program.

ORCID: 0000-0001-7198-4527
PI: Zhaowei Liu (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Luke is a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego and received his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of British Columbia. He is currently working in Prof. Zhaowei Liu's lab to develop novel quantum metamaterials for extreme nonlinear optics.

ORCID: 
PI: Hao Su (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Pranav Kumar is a first year MSCS student. His research interests include applying Machine Learning and Reinforcement Learning to solve robotic manipulation tasks, and applications of Generative Models in robotic manipulation tasks. He is also curious about the applications of Machine Learning in simulating soft body behavior and modeling applications in physics and chemistry. In his free time, he enjoys cooking and playing badminton.

ORCID: 0009-0008-4231-7184
PI: Josh Figueroa (Lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: Organometallic Chemistry, Chemical Synthesis

Erin Lewis is pursuing a PhD in Chemistry at UC San Diego. Prior to joining UCSD, she received her B.S. in Chemistry from UC Santa Barbara. She is now part of Prof. Joshua Figueroa's lab, where her research focuses on the stabilization of highly reactive main group species via sterically encumbered and electron-rich transition metal fragments.

ORCID: 0009-0009-1162-5659
PI: Zeinab Jahed (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: Bioelectronics, Nanofabrication, Electrophysiology, Electrochemical sensing

Dhivya Pushpa Meganathan is a PhD student in NanoEngineering working in Dr. Zeinab Jahed’s BioNanoElectronics Lab. Her research investigates the different languages of cell communication by studying electrical, mechanical, and chemical signals in cardiomyocytes through advanced electrophysiology and electrochemical sensing, with applications in cardiotoxicity screening and ion channel research. She also develops three-dimensional nanostructures such as nanopillar arrays to actively interact with the cell nucleus, enabling controlled nuclear membrane poration and targeted nuclear delivery. Together, these efforts establish new directions in nano–bioelectronics for understanding, probing, and engineering cellular behavior.

ORCID: 0000-0002-6265-9930
PI: Ester Kwon (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Katelyn earned her BS in biomedical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and is currently a PhD candidate in the lab of Dr. Ester Kwon in the Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering at UCSD. Her research explores targeted gene therapy at the blood-brain barrier for treating traumatic brain injury. In her free time, she enjoys playing taiko and doing public health advocacy.

ORCID: 0000-0002-7689-4413
PI: Zheng Chen (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Anthony is a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Zheng Chen's group in the Department of NanoEngineering at UC San Diego. His current research focuses on the development of metal-organic framework-based ionic conductors for batteries. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from Texas A&M University, where he also obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry under the tutelage of Professor Lei Fang. His dissertation work focused on controlling the conformation of π-conjugated organic molecules using hydrogen-bond interactions. He enjoys spending time with family, traveling, hiking, and gymnastics in his free time.

ORCID: 0000-0001-8335-5824
PI: Richard Averitt (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Varun is a PhD student in the Physics department, working with the group of Dr. Richard D. Averitt. He received his BS-MS dual degrees in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata in 2019. His research here at UC San Diego focuses on exploring novel phenomena in quantum materials using far-infrared (Terahertz) lasers. Working onMRSEC, Varun will be using dynamical THz spectroscopy to study quantum materials and sub-wavelength metamaterials coupled to them with the eventual goal of harnessing fundamental properties of the material with infrared light.

ORCID:0000-0002-7841-5244
PI: Zeinab Jahed (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Ali is a PhD student in the Nanoengineering program working in the Jahed lab. His research, for which he will travel as a Merkin Graduate Fellow to the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, is breaking new ground in the study of bacterial behavior in infectious diseases. Ali's project focuses on uncovering the complex molecular mechanisms behind bacterial mechanosensing, utilizing nanopattern platforms. Ali's work aims to elucidate how pathogens sense and navigate obstacles on surfaces, a critical factor in their survival and pathogenicity, for which the insights gained from his work could pave the way for new strategies in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of biofilm-associated infections, particularly in clinical settings.

ORCID: 0009-0008-9435-8367
PI: Zeinab Jahed (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Shivani a PhD student in Bioengineering. She aims for her work to enable more robust preclinical studies of drug screening and therapeutic development for neurological diseases including CTE and Alzheimer’s.

ORCID: 0000-0002-4088-6470
PI: David Fenning (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Chelsea is a PhD student in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at UC San Diego as advised by Prof. Fenning. She received her BS in Chemistry from Pacific Lutheran in Tacoma, WA. Her research interests are in the characterization of ultra-thin perovskite films with application for dynamic catalysis and advanced electronics.

ORCID: 0000-0001-7459-4145
PI: Zhaowei Liu (lab)
Key Areas of Expertise: 

Fanglin is in his 5th year of his Ph.D. program in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research explores the extraordinary phenomena of optical devices by encircling quantum materials & systems and the topological insulators. His current work examines how strong optical nonlinearity and topological photonics can reshape active photonic devices (free space/on-chip) in terms of efficiency and robustness. On a narrower scope, Fanglin's work uses nanometer scale metallic film to realize ultrahigh optical nonlinearity and shows topological phase transition possibility and valley Hall effect in near-infrared regime.