📢 #careerupdate I completed my postdoctoral training at the Argonne National Laboratory with Elena Shevchenko earlier this month. As a core-postdoc at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, I led projects on a broad range of synthesis-driven discovery initiatives looking for unconventional phases in nanostructured inorganic energy materials: to design and develop efficient and non-combustible battery chemistries. I coupled these synthetic initiatives with detailed mechanistic studies of structural transformations in material classes spanning chalcogenides, perovskites, MXenes and hybrid organic/inorganic systems using Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source beamlines. I am grateful to train and consistently utilize various electron microscopy tools, and many other instruments while at Argonne.

I’m excited to start my independent laboratory as a tenure-track professor at Loyola University Chicago this month! My “PBEnergyLab”, will be working on designing batteries to be non-combustible, cost-effective, efficient: and built with elements sustainably sourced within the US. We will be actively researching the discovery and development of new battery chemistries to realize this significant and timely solution to the current crisis faced by the U.S. domestic energy sector.

There are many mentors and collaborators I am grateful to throughout my academic training, spanning five university degrees in five areas of the physical sciences: and two continents, and in my research career at U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Laboratories. Of particular mention is my PhD advisor Prashant Jain at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who helped me transform from a Department of Physics University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign student into a chemistry researcher. I believe many of the attributes that I will be carrying forward as a researcher and mentor, will be influenced by the formative years spent with his group. I am lucky to have his and Elena’s guidance in my academic and research career.

Looking forward to building my independent lab as an empathetic leader! I have multiple openings for PhD advisees, postdoctoral scholars and undergraduate students in my group interested in working in nanocrystal syntheses, advanced electron microscopy studies, x-ray based methods, electrochemical testing and more. Feel free to drop me an email if interested! See a compiled list of instructions here https://lnkd.in/gs3s-vHS