“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” ——JFK in Texas on September 12, 1962

Crystalline Materials for Energy & Sustainability (CMES)

Research Overview

While our research spans multiple disciplines, including electrochemistry, materials science, chemical engineering, and condensed matter physics, understanding and controlling electrochemical synthesis of crystalline materials for energy & sustainability stands out as the unifying theme of the diverse research activities happening in the group. 

This theme emerges because of its profound implications for meeting pressing technological needs such as creating next-generation batteries and enabling atomically-precise additive manufacturing. In addition, electrochemical synthesis grants access to metastable phases of crystals that are hard to attain otherwise; Those phases could hold exotic quantum properties as set by their unique structural features such as the presence of Moiré superlattice. 

Finally, this theme per se is scientifically rich in that all of us coming from different backgrounds will find some ingredients we are familiar with—e.g., mass transport to a chemical engineer, crystal nucleation & growth to a materials scientist, band structures to a condensed matter physicist—and we take it from there!

Undergraduate Research Opportunities

College years is a valuable & unique time window for performing independent creative scientific research. It offers a taste of a career in academia and R&D, providing important insights for defining a future path. Based on the PI's own undergrad experience, you as an undergrad researcher—with adequate time commitment—can achieve a lot and make impactful scientific discoveries independently.

If you feel that you are interested in addressing energy/sustainability-related issues, please get in touch with the PI. For reference, you may work on projects related to batteries for energy storage, electrochemical additive manufacturing, and quantum materials—or something new that we define together. 

Each undergraduate student will directly work with Kent to conceptualize and implement an independent, creative research program that potentially results in one or more first-author publications in academic journals. Research experience in our group is aimed to fully prepare undergraduate students for future career challenges through research excellence. 

If you are potentially interested in pursuing a PhD in the future, the group will encourage and support you to start early and get prepared to apply for graduate fellowships (such as NSF GRF,  DoD NDSEG, NASA NSTGRO, Hertz Fellowship) in the senior year. Such recognitions will significantly benefit your long-term career growth, no matter where you decide to conduct your graduate study. In addition to the prestige that a fellowship carries, it provides financial support to freely pursue scientific ideas with whomever (i.e., PhD advisor) you prefer. Isn't that cool?!

“It was a good question. It's been a long time since anyone cared enough to ask. A good question.”    —— Fahrenheit 451