School of Engineering
Showing 151-200 of 271 Results
-
Danielle Mai
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Materials Science and Engineering
BioDanielle J. Mai joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford in January 2020. She earned her B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Mai was an Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, where she engineered materials with selective biomolecular transport properties, elucidated mechanisms of toughness and extensibility in entangled associative hydrogels, and developed high-throughput methods for the discovery of polypeptide materials. The Mai Lab engineers biopolymers, which are the building blocks of life. Specifically, the group integrates precise biopolymer engineering with multi-scale experimental characterization to advance biomaterials development and to enhance fundamental understanding of soft matter physics. Dr. Mai's work has been recognized through the AIChE 35 Under 35 Award (2020), APS DPOLY/UKPPG Lecture Exchange (2021), Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program Award (2022), ACS PMSE Arthur K. Doolittle Award (2023), and MIT Technology Review List of 35 Innovators Under 35 (2023).
-
Dr. Arun Majumdar
Chester Naramore Dean, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Jay Precourt Professor, Prof of Mechanical Eng, of Energy Science & Eng, of Photon Science, Sr Fellow at Woods and, by courtesy, at Hoover & Prof, by court, of MS&E
BioDr. Arun Majumdar is the inaugural Dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He is the Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor at Stanford University, a faculty member of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Energy Science and Engineering, a Senior Fellow and former Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy and Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment and Senior Fellow by (courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. He is also a faculty in Department of Photon Science at SLAC.
In October 2009, Dr. Majumdar was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate to become the Founding Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), where he served until June 2012 and helped ARPA-E become a model of excellence and innovation for the government with bipartisan support from Congress and other stakeholders. Between March 2011 and June 2012, he also served as the Acting Under Secretary of Energy, enabling the portfolio of Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Electricity Delivery and Reliability, Office of Nuclear Energy and the Office of Fossil Energy, as well as multiple cross-cutting efforts such as Sunshot, Grid Modernization Team and others that he had initiated. Furthermore, he was a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, on a variety of matters related to management, personnel, budget, and policy. In 2010, he served on Secretary Chu's Science Team to help stop the leak of the Deep Water Horizon (BP) oil spill.
Dr. Majumdar served as the Chair of the Advisory Board of the US Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm. He led the Agency Review Team for the Department of Energy, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Biden-Harris Presidential transition. He served as the Vice Chairman of the Advisory Board of US Secretary of Energy, Dr. Ernest Moniz, and was also a Science Envoy for the US Department of State with focus on energy and technology innovation in the Baltics and Poland. He also serves on numerous advisory boards and boards of businesses, investment groups. government agencies and non-profit organizations.
After leaving Washington, DC and before joining Stanford, Dr. Majumdar was the Vice President for Energy at Google, where he assembled a team to create technologies and businesses at the intersection of data, computing and electricity grid.
Dr. Majumdar is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research in the past has involved the science and engineering of nanoscale materials and devices, especially in the areas of energy conversion, transport and storage as well as biomolecular analysis. His current research focuses on redox reactions and systems that are fundamental to a sustainable energy future, multidimensional nanoscale imaging and microscopy, and an effort to leverage modern AI techniques to develop and deliver energy and climate solutions.
Prior to joining the Department of Energy, Dr. Majumdar was the Almy & Agnes Maynard Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at University of California–Berkeley and the Associate Laboratory Director for energy and environment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He also spent the early part of his academic career at Arizona State University and University of California, Santa Barbara.
Dr. Majumdar received his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1985 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989 under the supervision of Professor Chang-Lin Tien. -
Andrew J. Mannix
Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAtomically thin 2D materials incorporated into van der Waals heterostructures are a promising platform to deterministically engineer quantum materials with atomically resolved thickness and abrupt interfaces across macroscopic length scales while retaining excellent material properties. Because 2D materials exhibit a wide range of electronic characteristics with properties that often rival conventional electronic materials — e.g., metals, semiconductors, insulators, and superconductors — it is possible to combine them in virtually infinite variety to achieve diverse heterostructures. Furthermore, the van der Waals interface enables interlayer twist engineering to modify the interlayer symmetry, periodic potential (moiré superlattice), and hybridization, which has resulted in novel quantum states of matter. Many of these heterostructures, especially those involving specific interlayer twist angles, would be otherwise infeasible through direct growth.
The Mannix Group is developing a unique set of in-house capabilities to systematically elucidate the fundamental structure-property relationships underpinning the growth of 2D materials and their inclusion into van der Waals heterostructures. Greater understanding will allow us to provide a platform for engineering the properties of matter at the atomic scale and offer guidance for emerging applications in novel electronics and in quantum information science.
To accomplish this, we employ: precise growth techniques such as chemical vapor deposition and molecular beam epitaxy; automated van der Waals assembly; and atomically-resolved microscopy including cryo-STM/AFM. -
Paul McIntyre
Rick and Melinda Reed Professor, Professor of Photon Science and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioMcIntyre's group performs research on nanostructured inorganic materials for applications in electronics, energy technologies and sensors. He is best known for his work on metal oxide/semiconductor interfaces, ultrathin dielectrics, defects in complex metal oxide thin films, and nanostructured Si-Ge single crystals. His research team synthesizes materials, characterizes their structures and compositions with a variety of advanced microscopies and spectroscopies, studies the passivation of their interfaces, and measures functional properties of devices.
-
Luis Mejia
Affiliate, Materials Science and Engineering
BioLuis has been a technology transfer professional at Stanford for over 30 years. He is a volunteer for Climate Donor, Inc. a non-profit that helps fund climate change and species extinction mitigation projects. Prior to joining Stanford he worked on solar energy systems and energy management at Honeywell and Pacific Gas & Electric. He has a degree in Energy Systems Engineering from Arizona State University, is a Fellow of the Disruptor Foundation and is a recipient of an award for Excellence in Technology Transfer from the Department of Energy, Federal Laboratory Consortium.
-
Nicholas Melosh
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
BioThe Melosh group explores how to apply new methods from the semiconductor and self-assembly fields to important problems in biology, materials, and energy. We think about how to rationally design engineered interfaces to enhance communication with biological cells and tissues, or to improve energy conversion and materials synthesis. In particular, we are interested in seamlessly integrating inorganic structures together with biology for improved cell transfection and therapies, and designing new materials, often using diamondoid molecules as building blocks.
My group is very interested in how to design new inorganic structures that will seamless integrate with biological systems to address problems that are not feasible by other means. This involves both fundamental work such as to deeply understand how lipid membranes interact with inorganic surfaces, electrokinetic phenomena in biologically relevant solutions, and applying this knowledge into new device designs. Examples of this include “nanostraw” drug delivery platforms for direct delivery or extraction of material through the cell wall using a biomimetic gap-junction made using nanoscale semiconductor processing techniques. We also engineer materials and structures for neural interfaces and electronics pertinent to highly parallel data acquisition and recording. For instance, we have created inorganic electrodes that mimic the hydrophobic banding of natural transmembrane proteins, allowing them to ‘fuse’ into the cell wall, providing a tight electrical junction for solid-state patch clamping. In addition to significant efforts at engineering surfaces at the molecular level, we also work on ‘bridge’ projects that span between engineering and biological/clinical needs. My long history with nano- and microfabrication techniques and their interactions with biological constructs provide the skills necessary to fabricate and analyze new bio-electronic systems.
Research Interests:
Bio-inorganic Interface
Molecular materials at interfaces
Self-Assembly and Nucleation and Growth -
Kyle Iman Miller
Undergraduate, Materials Science and Engineering
BioI'm a 2024 graduate of South Eugene High School in Oregon, passionate about triathlons, wilderness exploration, and environmental sustainability.
-
Jordan Moore
Postdoctoral Scholar, Materials Science and Engineering
BioJordan Moore is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, appointed in both the Departments of Materials Science & Engineering and Neurology. He earned his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University within the Department of Biomedical Engineering, where he was mentored by Dr. Daniel Gallego Perez. During his doctoral studies, Jordan's research primarily centered around the application of electroporation for gene delivery in vivo, with a specific focus on cell-reprogramming.
His work in his Ph.D. program aimed to address the restoration of blood flow to damaged peripheral nerves, contributing to the promotion of nerve regeneration and functional recovery. As a postdoctoral researcher, Jordan is currently co-mentored by Professor Sarah Heilshorn and Dr. Marion Buckwalter. In this role, he is dedicated to the development of innovative biomaterial-based platforms for gene and drug delivery. His research focuses on the treatment of stroke-related injuries and the prevention of cognitive decline. -
Kunal Mukherjee
Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
BioKunal Mukherjee is an assistant professor in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford. He has been an assistant professor in the Materials department at UC Santa Barbara (2016-2020), held postdoctoral appointments at IBM TJ Watson Research Center (2016) and MIT (2015), and worked as a transceiver engineer at Finisar (2009-2010).
The Mukherjee group specializes in semiconductors that emit and detect light in the infrared. Our research enables better materials for data transmission, sensing, manufacturing, and environmental monitoring. We make high-quality thin films with IV-VI (PbSnSe) and III-V (GaAs-InAs/GaSb) material systems and spend much of our time understanding how imperfections in the crystalline structure such as dislocations and point defects impact their electronic and optical properties. This holds the key to directly integrating these semiconductors with silicon and germanium substrates for new hybrid circuits that combine infrared photonics and conventional electronics. -
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.
-
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.
-
Marshall Scott Padilla
Acting Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
Assistant Professor, Materials Science and EngineeringBioMarshall 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 University. 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. -
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.
-
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.
-
Kate Reidy
Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
BioKate Reidy will begin as an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford in September 2026. Her research takes a ‘bottom up' approach to nanoscale design, tailoring material properties by understanding and manipulating their atomic structure. She combines advanced characterization with in situ microscopy to elucidate growth mechanisms, chemical composition, and response to stimuli at the atomic scale.
Her research group aims to push the limits of nanoscale engineering by observing and controlling atomic-scale kinetic and thermodynamic phenomena such as adsorption, diffusion, nucleation, defect and interface formation - mapping such structural dynamics to quantum, energy, and opto-electronic properties. She is broadly interested in the functional utilization of quantum properties of nanomaterials in our classical world.
Prior to joining Stanford, Kate was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. She completed her PhD in Materials Science & Engineering at MIT as a MIT Energy initiative and William Asbjornsen Albert Memorial Fellow, entitled 'Atomic-Scale Design at the 2D/3D Interface using Electron Microscopy'. She received her B.Sc in Nanoscience, Physics, and Chemistry of Advanced Materials from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her work has been recognized by the MIT School of Engineering, Microscopy Society of America, Materials Research Society Gold Award, 'Best Doctoral Thesis' Award at MIT DMSE.
