Ph.D. Students
Professor Arun Majumdar
E-Mail: majumdar-at-me.berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 643-8199
Professor Arun Majumdar received a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) in 1985, and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989, for research conducted in the laboratory of Professor Chang-Lin Tien. After being on the faculty of Arizona State University (1989-92) and University of California, Santa Barbara (1992-96), he began his faculty appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley on January 1, 1997. He currently holds the Almy and Agnes Maynard Chair Professorship in the College of Engineering.
In addition to his faculty appointment, Professor Majumdar serves as the Director of the Berkeley Nanosciences and Nanoengineering Institute. He is also a member of the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). He served as the founding chair of the ASME Nanotechnology Institute, and is currently a member of the Council of Materials Science and Engineering at the Department of Energy. He also serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Molecular and Cellular Biomechanics, and is the editor in chief of Micro/Nanoscale Thermophysical Engineering.
Professor Majumdar is a recipient of the Institute Silver Medal (IIT-B) (1985), NSF Young Investigator Award (1992-97), ASME Melville Medal (1992), the Best Paper award of the ASME Heat Transfer Division of ASME (1993), Gustus Larson Memorial Award of the ASME (2001), and Distinguished Alumni Award from IIT-B (2002). He is a fellow of ASME and AAAS, and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.
Professor Majumdar's research interests are in the broad area of mechanics and transport in nanostructured materials. Of particular current interest are phonon dynamics and transport in low-dimensional materials, materials and devices for thermoelectric energy conversion, transport and reactions in confined liquids (nanofluidics), chemomechanics of small and macromolecules with applications in chem/biosensing, and nanoscale imaging.
Post-Doctoral
Scholars
Current Members
Current Members
Yang Zhao
E-Mail: yangz-at-me.berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 642-3739
Research Engineer. Yang received her doctoral degree from UC Berkeley in 2002. She has been acting research administrator since 2007.
Renkun Chen
E-Mail: rkchen-at-me.berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 643-6512
Postdoctoral Scholar. Renkun completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Berkeley in December 2008. In graduate school he studied phonon transport and thermoelectricity in nanostructures and worked on nanostructured heat pipes in Prof. Majumdar's group. His current research is focused on understanding phonon transport in nanowires.
Chuanhua Duan
E-Mail: chuanhua-at-me.berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 643-6512
Ph.D. Student. Chuanhua received his B.E. (2002) and M.E. (2004) in Engineering Mechanics from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He joined Majumdar's group in Spring 2005. His research interests include exploring electrostatic effects and the interaction of biomolecules in nanofluidic channels. He is also involved in the project of microfluidic mixer.
Yusra Satoglu
E-Mail: yusra-at-berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 643-6512
Ph.D. Student. Yusra received her B.S. (2004) from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. She joined Majumdar's group in the fall of 2005.
Joe Feser
E-Mail: feser-at-berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 643-6512
Ph.D. Student. Joe obtained his bachelors degree (2003) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Delaware, continuing on to get his masters (2005) with a specialty in hydrogen fuel cells. He is currently investigating scalable, low-dimensional materials for thermoelectric applications. He joined Majumdar's group in 2006.
Webpage: http://web.mac.com/jpfeser/
Ming-Chang Lu
E-Mail: mclu-at-newton.berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 643-6512
Ph.D. Student. Ming-Chang is from Taiwan. Ming-Chang received his B.S. (2000) and M.S. (2002) in Power Mechanical Engineering from National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. He worked in ITRI from 2002-2006. He joined Majumdar’s group in 2006. He is now working in applying nanowires in thermal management.
Chris Zueger
E-Mail: zueger-at-berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 643-6512
M.S./Ph.D. Student. Chris received his B.S. (2006) in Mechanical Engineering from the Univerity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Il. He joined Majumdar’s group in Fall 2006.
Jayakanth Ravichandran
E-Mail: jayakanth-at-berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 643-6512
Ph.D. Student. Jayakanth received his B.Tech (2007) and M.Tech(2007) [dual
degree] in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from the Indian
Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He joined Majumdar's group in
the summer of 2007. He is working on thermoelectric oxides.
Rong-Shiuan (Renea) Chu
E-mail: reneachu-at-berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 643-6512
Ph.D. Student. Rong-Shiuan received her B.S. (2007) in Civil Engineering from National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
She joined Majumdar's group in Fall 2007.
Kedar Hippalgaonkar
E-mail: khgaonkar-at-berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 501-4600
Ph. D. Student. Kedar obtained his BSME from Purdue University in Dec '05. He then worked in Singapore at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) from 2006. After joining the Majumdar group in Fall '07 he is working on understanding thermal properties of one-dimensional nanostructures. His research interests include studying fundamental heat and energy transfer processes at the nanoscale.
Vinod Srinivasan
E-Mail: vinods-at-me.berkeley.edu
Phone #: (510) 643-6512
Office: 213 Hesse
Postdoctoral Scholar. Vinod Srinivasan finished his PhD at the University of Minnesota in Fall 2007. His research interests are in fundamental phenomena of
heat transfer and fluid mechanics. Currently he is working on understanding the effects of surface tension and microsccale surface treatment on boiling and evaporation, with immediate application to heat pipes.
Dongyan Xu
E-Mail: DXu3-at-lbl.gov
Phone: (510)643-6512
Postdoctoral Scholar. Dongyan received her doctoral degree from Vanderbilt University in 2008. She joined Majumdar's group in August 2008. Her research involves thermal characterization of nanostructured thin films for thermoelectric applications.
Karma Sawyer
E-Mail: karma.sawyer-at-gmail.com
Phone: (510)643-6512
Postdoctoral Scholar. Karma Sawyer completed her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in December 2008. In graduate school she studied the dynamics of organometallic compounds in solution using ultrafast vibrational spectroscopy and density functional theory modeling. She joined the Majumdar group in January 2009. She is currently studying heat and energy transport in nanowire thermoelectric materials and optical techniques for measuring thermal properties of nanostructured materials.
