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Date: April, 2026
Zhongzheng Mao and Prof. Zakaria Y. Al Balushi published a News & Views article in Nature Synthesis titled “Anchoring order in tellurium nanowire thin films.” [Link]
Date: April, 2026
Prof. Al Balushi is co-organizing a symposium at the 2026 MRS Spring Meeting in Honolulu, HI: “Engineering 2D Materials and van der Waals Heterostructures.”
Date: Aug 22, 2025
Prof. Al Balushi was awarded the 2025 Schieber Prize by the International Organization for Crystal Growth for seminal contributions to interfacial crystallization of low-dimensional materials. [Link]
Date: June 11, 2025
Prof. Al Balushi, together with Pieremanuele Canepa and Shijing Sun, received a 2025 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award for the project “Autonomous Discovery of Single-phase High-Entropy Transition Metal Chalcogenides.” The award supports collaborative work at the intersection of automation, AI, and chemical/materials discovery [Link]
Date: June 20, 2025
New paper in Small on heterointerfacial electrostatic doping of graphene
Congratulations to Jiayun Liang and collaborators on the publication of “Spatially Enhanced Electrostatic Doping in Graphene Realized via Heterointerfacial Precipitated Metals” in Small. The work demonstrates spatially controlled work-function and carrier-density tuning in graphene using sub-monolayer gallium formed beneath the 2D material. [Link]
Date: March 2025
Prof. Al Balushi organized a symposium at the APS March Meeting in Minneapolis, MN: “2D Materials: Formation Pathways and Mechanisms, Heterostructures, and Defects.”
Date: Jan 2025
New paper in ACS Nanoscience Au on wafer-scale MoTe₂ growth
Congratulations to Bum Jun Kim and collaborators on the publication of “Phase Controlled Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition Growth of Wafer-Scale Molybdenum Ditelluride” in ACS Nanoscience Au. The work advances MOCVD synthesis of wafer-scale 2D transition-metal ditellurides [Link]
Date: June 20, 2024
Joshua Herrera receives DOE SCGSR and ALS Graduate Fellowship support
Congratulations to Joshua Herrera for receiving a one-year DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research award and the Advanced Light Source Graduate Fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Date: May 21, 2024
Prof. Al Balushi received a 2024 Bakar Fellows Academic Innovation Catalyst award for the project “Rare-Earth Catalysts for Low Temperature Production of Nitrogen Enriched Materials and Chemicals of High Value.” The award provides three years to support commercialization-oriented research in deep technology and climate technology. [Link]
Date: Aug 2023
Prof. Al Balushi served as Meeting Chair for the International Materials Research Congress in Cancún, Mexico.
Date: Jan 2023
Congratulations to Jiayun Liang on our new paper in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces: “Light-Induced Surface Tension Gradients for Hierarchical Assembly of Particles from Liquid Metals.” This work shows how light-induced Marangoni flow in liquid gallium can guide dispersed particles into ordered hierarchical assemblies. [Link]
Date: Jan 2023
Prof. Al Balushi received Berkeley Collegium support for “Integrating optical characterization into undergraduate materials processing education and research,” supporting research-enriched undergraduate teaching in materials processing [Link]
Date: Aug. 2022
Prof. Al Balushi was highlighted as a “rising star of nanoscience” in connection with his work on next-generation nanomaterials and unconventional synthesis approaches for 2D semiconductors. [Link]
Date: June 20, 2022
Prof. Al Balushi was selected to receive the 2022 Micron Corporation Early Career Award for his contributions to electronic materials synthesis, low-dimensional materials, and semiconductor integration.
Date: June 20, 2022
Prof. Al Balushi delivered a lecture at the Fundamental of Quantum Materials Summer School [Link]
Date: June 7, 2022
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]
Date: May 8, 2021
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".
Date: April 1, 2022
Prof. Al Balushi hosts group of students from Contra Costa Community College in his lab, teaching them crystal growth of 2D materials.
Date: Jan 30, 2022
Prof. Al Balushi has been awarded the prestigious NSF CAREER award for his project entitled "Phase Control in Synthetic Two-dimensional Materials."
Date: Jan 1, 2022
Prof. Al Balushi named Editorial Board Member in Nature family journal Communications Materials in the area of Electronic Materials Synthesis, Nanomaterials, Quantum Materials.
Date: Jan 1, 2022
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.
Date: Nov 30, 2021
Prof. Al Balushi organizes symposia at the Fall 2021 MRS hybrid conference: "EQ20-Beyond Graphene 2D Materials—Synthesis, Properties and Device Applications".
Date: Sept 13, 2021
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
Date: July 21, 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.
Date: June 21, 2021
Prof. Al Balushi has been elected to the American Association for Crystal Growth (AACG) Executive Committee for a term that ends in 2025.
Date: June 1, 2021
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.
Date: April 17, 2021
Prof. Al Balushi co-organizes symposia at the Spring 2021 MRS virtual conference: "NM07-Beyond Graphene 2D Materials—Synthesis, Properties and Device Applications".
Date: Dec 3, 2020
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"
Date: Dec 3, 2020
Prof. Al Balushi awarded the 2020 Nanotechnology Young Researcher Award from IOP Nanotechnology
https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0957-4484/page/Young%20Researcher
Date: Dec 3, 2020
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
Date: Dec 1, 2020
Prof. Al Balushi featured in Fall 2020 Berkeley Science Review:
https://berkeleysciencereview.com/article/2020/11/30/faculty-profile-zak-al-balushi
Date: Nov 28, 2020
Prof. Al Balushi among Berkeley Engineering five new faculty fellows:
Date: Nov 27, 2020
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".
Date: Oct 15, 2020
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.
Date: Sept 13, 2020
Prof. Al Balushi joins virtual panel at USC Viterbi Academic Careers Workshop.
https://viterbigrad.usc.edu/academic-workshop-schedule-2020/
Date: June 19, 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
Date: June 2, 2020
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.
Date: May 25, 2020
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.
Date: May 25, 2020
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
Date: Jan 8, 2020
New fan installed in Hearst mining memorial building to improve exhaust capacity in the Al Balushi Research Group labs.
Date: Dec 19, 2019
Prof. Al Balushi gives invited seminar at Sandia National Labs in Livermore, CA.
Date: Dec 9, 2019
MOCVD systems move into the Al Balushi Group lab.
Date: Dec 4, 2019
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
Date: July 27, 2019
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.
Date: May 22, 2019
Prof. Al Balushi gives invited talk at the 2019 Compound Semiconductor Week (CSW) in Nara, Japan.
Date: May 15, 2019
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.
Date: March 19, 2019
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!!
Date: Jan 1, 2019
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.
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