Prof. Al Balushi delivered a lecture at the Fundamental of Quantum Materials Summer School [Link]
Prof. Al Balushi has been named a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar, an honor that comes with an unrestricted research award as well as mentorship, networking and collaboration opportunities. [Link]
Prof. Al Balushi organizes symposia at the Spring 2022 MRS conference: "NM01-Beyond Graphene 2D Materials—Synthesis, Properties and Device Applications". Two group abstracts were presented:
Jiayun Liang's oral presentation on "Stabilizing 2D Phosphorus Allotropes at Confined Heterointerfaces".
Jennifer Toy's poster presentation on "Biaxial Strain Engineering of MoSe2/WSe2 Heterostructures".
Prof. Al Balushi hosts group of students from Contra Costa Community College in his lab, teaching them crystal growth of 2D materials.
Prof. Al Balushi has been awarded the prestigious NSF CAREER award for his project entitled "Phase Control in Synthetic Two-dimensional Materials."
Prof. Al Balushi named Editorial Board Member in Nature family journal Communications Materials in the area of Electronic Materials Synthesis, Nanomaterials, Quantum Materials.
Prof. Al Balushi named new Principal Editor for Journal of Materials Research (A Springer Nature Journal) in the area of 2D materials synthesis, properties and device applications.
Prof. Al Balushi organizes symposia at the Fall 2021 MRS hybrid conference: "EQ20-Beyond Graphene 2D Materials—Synthesis, Properties and Device Applications".
Prof. Al Balushi awarded the Society of Hellman Fellowship. This Hellman project aims to develop a new kind of superconducting material known as “topological superconductors” that will address challenges with processing of quantum information while reducing energy consumption of logic operations.
https://vpf.berkeley.edu/society-hellman-fellows-2021
Prof. Al Balushi hosts Jacob Ahmad from College of Alameda Community College through the Transfer-to-Excellence REU program. Jacob is working on Finite Element modeling of the growth of 2D materials from liquids metals.
Prof. Al Balushi has been elected to the American Association for Crystal Growth (AACG) Executive Committee for a term that ends in 2025.
Congratulation to Ellis Spickermann for obtaining a Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Fellowship to perform undergraduate research in our lab on low temperature synthesis and characterization of 2D materials.
Prof. Al Balushi co-organizes symposia at the Spring 2021 MRS virtual conference: "NM07-Beyond Graphene 2D Materials—Synthesis, Properties and Device Applications".
New pre-print on arxiv from our group, in collaboration with our colleagues at UPenn, NIST and NPL on "Opportunities in Electrically Tunable 2D Materials Beyond Graphene: Recent Progress and Future Outlook"
Prof. Al Balushi awarded the 2020 Nanotechnology Young Researcher Award from IOP Nanotechnology
https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0957-4484/page/Young%20Researcher
Check out our new open access perspective article on "an outlook into the flat land of 2D materials beyond graphene: synthesis, properties and device applications" in IOP 2D Materials.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2053-1583/abc13d/meta
Prof. Al Balushi featured in Fall 2020 Berkeley Science Review:
https://berkeleysciencereview.com/article/2020/11/30/faculty-profile-zak-al-balushi
Prof. Al Balushi among Berkeley Engineering five new faculty fellows:
Prof. Al Balushi co-organizes symposia at the Spring/Fall 2020 MRS virtual conference: "S.NM09-Layered van der Waals Heterostructures—Synthesis, Physical Phenomena and Devices" and "F.EL04-Beyond Graphene 2D Materials—Synthesis, Properties and Device Applications".
Congratulation to Ethan Klein for obtaining a Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Fellowship to perform undergraduate research in our lab on synthesis and characterization of phase change 2D materials.
Prof. Al Balushi joins virtual panel at USC Viterbi Academic Careers Workshop.
https://viterbigrad.usc.edu/academic-workshop-schedule-2020/
Prof. Al Balushi named among one of the "100 more inspiring Black scientists in America" by Cell Mentor.
http://crosstalk.cell.com/blog/100-more-inspiring-black-scientists-in-america
Prof. Al Balushi was a guest editor in a Focus Section on "Heterogeneity in Beyond Graphene 2D Materials" with Kai Xiao at Oak Ridge National Labs and Sefaattin Tongay at Arizona State University.
Prof. Al Balushi named new Associate Editor for Journal of Electronic Materials (A Springer Nature Journal) in the area of 2D materials synthesis, doping, characterization and integration.
Check out our new review article on Epitaxy in Transition metal Dichalcogenides in collaboration with in the Annual Reviews in Materials:
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-matsci-090519-113456
New fan installed in Hearst mining memorial building to improve exhaust capacity in the Al Balushi Research Group labs.
Prof. Al Balushi gives invited seminar at Sandia National Labs in Livermore, CA.
MOCVD systems move into the Al Balushi Group lab.
Prof. Al Balushi organizes largest Fall MRS 2019 symposium "Beyond Graphene 2D Materials: Synthesis, Properties and Device Applications".
https://www.mrs.org/fall2019/symposium-sessions/call-for-papers-detail?code=FF01
Prof. Al Balushi gives invited lecture on "Crystal Growth of Low Dimensional Materials at the International Summer School on Crystal Growth in Grandy, CO, USA.
Prof. Al Balushi gives invited talk at the 2019 Compound Semiconductor Week (CSW) in Nara, Japan.
The group welcomes a new PhD student: Jiayun Liang from University of Science and Technology of China.
Jiayun will be developing platforms to stabilize metastable 2D materials.
Prof. Al Balushi attends the 45th National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Annual Convention in Detroit, MI with UC Berkeley College of Engineering undergraduate and graduate students. Go Bear!!
Professor Al Balushi joins UC Berkeley as an Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, establishing a new Electronic Materials Synthesis group in the Hearst Mining Memorial Building.