Two MechSE graduate students who participate in I-MRSEC research had the honor of receiving the prestigious MRS Silver Graduate Student Award at the MRS Spring Meeting in Arizona last week. Both students are from MRSEC PI SungWoo Nam's research group in the Mechanical Science and Engineering Department and are involved in research within the Illinois MRSEC’s Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) on active interfaces between highly deformable nanomaterials.
Jonghyun Choi presented "Stimulation and Recording of Optogenetically Encoded Skeletal Muscle Cells Based on Transparent Graphene Field-Effect Transistors." Included as coauthor was MRSEC PI Rashid Bashir. “I’m doing 3D texturing of nanomaterials for strain engineering, which has applications in things like photodetectors or biosensors,” explained Jonghyun. He has a genuine interest in research and it makes him happy. Jonghyun says he strives to continue learning about good practice for writing about and presenting his research. This award is good evidence he already excels on this front.
Michael Cai Wang presented "Meta-Materials--Large-Scale, Highly-Ordered Self-Assembly of 0D/1D Plasmonic Nanoparticle Arrays on Deterministically Deformed Monolayer 2D Materials Templates" with MRSEC PI Catherine Murphy as coauthor. He describes his research as “nanomanufacturing, or looking at how to guide self-assembly of 0D and 1D materials into 2D or 2.5D materials,” with the added half dimension coming from the crumpling or other structure added to the 2D material. “It’s like (the game) Connect 4 at the nanoscale,” he explains. Some of the challenges he faced in this research were figuring out how to deal with interfacial effects and how environmental factors such as humidity, temperature, and contaminants affect material properties. But he finds that overcoming these challenges is worthwhile for the goal of developing a completely bottom-up fabrication approach.
Both students are senior researchers in the Nam group, with Jonghyun having just completed his doctoral defense two weeks ago, and Michael expecting to defend his thesis very soon. They both also have exciting plans for the near future. Jonghyun is planning to go to an industrial position related to microelectronics. Michael will be starting a position as an assistant professor at the University of South Florida, where he will develop his own program of research.
