School of Engineering
Showing 181-200 of 270 Results
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William Nix
Lee Otterson Professor in the School of Engineering, Emeritus
BioI have been engaged in the study of mechanical properties of materials for nearly 50 years. My early work was on high temperature creep and fracture of metals, focusing on techniques for measuring internal back stresses in deforming metals and featuring the modeling of diffusional deformation and cavity growth processes. My students and I also studied high temperature dispersion strengthening mechanisms and described the effects of threshold stresses on these creep processes. Since the mid-1980's we have focused most of our attention on the mechanical properties of thin film materials used in microprocessors and related devices. We have developed many of the techniques that are now used to study of thin film mechanical properties, including nanoindentation, substrate curvature methods, bulge testing methods and the mechanical testing of micromachined (MEMS) structures. We are also known for our work on the mechanisms of strain relaxation in heteroepitaxial thin films and plastic deformation of thin metal films on substrates. In addition we have engaged in research on the growth, characterization and modeling of thin film microstructures, especially as they relate to the development of intrinsic stresses. Some of our recent work dealt with the mechanical properties of nanostructures and with strain gradients and size effects on the mechanical properties of crystalline materials. Our most recent work deals with the mechanical properties of lithiated nanostructures that are being considered for lithium-ion battery applications.
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Colin Ophus
Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Center Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioColin Ophus is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the L&S Family Center Fellow in Energy and Sustainability at the Precourt Institute for Energy. He previously worked as a Staff Scientist at the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM), part of the Molecular Foundry, at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. He was awarded a US Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career award in 2018, and the Burton medal from the Microscopy Society of America (MSA) in 2018. His research focuses on experimental methods, reconstruction algorithms, and software codes for simulation, analysis, and instrument design of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning TEM (STEM).
Colin advocates for open science and his group has developed open-source scientific software including as the quantitative electron microscopy (quantEM) analysis code, the Prismatic STEM simulation code and the py4DSTEM analysis toolkit. He has taught many workshops around the world on topics ranging from scientific visualization to large scale data analysis. He also is the founder and editor-in-chief for a new journal based on interactive science communication named Elemental Microscopy. -
Punnag Padhy
Postdoctoral Scholar, Materials Science and Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCurrently, I am working on an on-chip platform to simultaneously trap and manipulate micron scale beads and droplets with an intention to implement chemical reactions on a chip at ultrasmall volumes.
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Marshall Scott Padilla
Acting Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
BioMarshall Scott Padilla will begin as an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a Sarafan ChEM-H Institute Scholar at Stanford in September 2026 pending University approval. His research takes a rational-design approach to RNA medicine, engineering lipids and lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) that deliver RNA and proteins to specific cells. Rather than relying on empirical, large-scale screening, he couples the synthesis of structurally defined lipid libraries with multimodal biophysical characterization and in vivo screening to extract the structure–activity relationships that govern delivery.
His research group aims to move beyond the field's default of hepatic delivery toward LNPs that direct RNA and protein cargoes to defined cell types, enabling durable and precise therapies. Group interests span ionizable lipid synthesis, gene editing, cancer immunotherapy, ionic liquids, mapping endosomal escape, and the analytical and biophysical methods needed to relate nanoparticle structure to function. He is broadly interested in establishing generalizable chemical and structural principles for the next generation of delivery vehicles.
Prior to joining Stanford, Marshall was an NIH postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania with Prof. Michael J. Mitchell, where he developed the Branched ENdosomal Disruptor (BEND) lipid architecture for mRNA and CRISPR-Cas9 delivery (Nature Communications, 2025), advanced solution-based biophysical methods for characterizing LNP structure (Nature Biotechnology, 2025), and engineered LNPs co-delivering mRNA and small-molecule drugs for oral cancer chemoimmunotherapy (Advanced Materials, accepted). He completed his PhD in Chemistry (Chemical Biology) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his B.S. in Chemistry at the College of William & Mary. His work has been recognized by the Society for Biomaterials (Burroughs Wellcome Fund BioInterfaces Rising Star Award), the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (Hatton Award, postdoctoral first place), and an NIH/NIDCR T90 fellowship. -
Levi D. Palmer
Postdoctoral Scholar, Materials Science and Engineering
BioLevi Palmer is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford beginning August 2026. As an Arnold O. Beckman Fellow and a Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM) Fellow, he is working with Professors Kate Reidy, Colin Ophus, and Stacey Bent to develop in situ microscopy methods to image materials growth, performance, and failure at atomic scales.
Prior to his time at Stanford, Levi was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Caltech. He completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry under Professor Scott Cushing to image carrier and heat dynamics in photocatalysts by developing ultrafast electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) methods. During his Ph.D., he also received a DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Fellowship to work at Argonne National Laboratory with Dr. Thomas Gage. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and studied under Professor Renee Frontiera. -
Feng Pan
Postdoctoral Scholar, Materials Science and Engineering
BioFeng Pan is a postdoctoral scholar with Prof. Jennifer A. Dionne in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford. He received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Wisconsin Madison, advised by Prof. Randall H. Goldsmith. His research expertise spans several aspects, including quantum optics, nanophotonics, metasurfaces, chiral metamaterials, plasmonics, and single-particle microscopy and spectroscopy. He is interested in harnessing photonics to address critical challenges in energy, quantum information science, and sustainability.
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Eric Pop
Pease-Ye Professor, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and Professor, by courtesy, of Materials Science and Engineering and of Applied Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe Pop Lab explores problems at the intersection of nanoelectronics and nanoscale energy conversion. These include fundamental limits of current and heat flow, energy-efficient transistors and memory, and energy harvesting via thermoelectrics. The Pop Lab also works with novel nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes, graphene, BN, MoS2, and their device applications, through an approach that is experimental, computational and highly collaborative.
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Friedrich Prinz
Leonardo Professor, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, of Materials Science and Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioFritz Prinz is the Leonardo Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. He also serves as the Director of the Nanoscale Prototyping Laboratory and Faculty Co-director of the NPL-Affiliate Program. A solid-state physicist by training, Prinz leads a group of doctoral students, postdoctoral scholars, and visiting scholars who are addressing fundamental issues on energy conversion and storage at the nanoscale. In his Laboratory, a wide range of nano-fabrication technologies are employed to build prototype fuel cells and capacitors with induced topological electronic states. We are testing these concepts and novel material structures through atomic layer deposition, scanning tunneling microscopy, impedance spectroscopy and other technologies. In addition, the Prinz group group uses atomic scale modeling to gain insights into the nature of charge separation and recombination processes. Before coming to Stanford in 1994, he was on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. Prinz earned a PhD in Physics at the University of Vienna.
