Team

GROUP LEADER

Firouzeh Sabri - Professor and Department Chair

Sabri is an experimental materials physicist with a focus on synthesis, characterization, and understanding of bulk and surface properties of nanomaterials including aerogels. Currently, materials that are being studied by her group include elastomeric materials as well as mesoporous materials such as aerogels. She has recently been working on the design, synthesis and characterization of a RTV-aerogel compound material for cryogenic tank material applications for space exploration.

Additionally, she has been studying the effect of environmental conditions (e.g. in vivo, in vitro, ambient) on properties of aerogels and how crosslinked aerogels can be further developed for biomedical applications to serve as a "Smart" implant.

Sabri uses a variety of characterization techniques to understand bulk and surface properties of neat, doped, and compound materials.

She is also the founder and current director of the MemphisCRESH summer internship program for the College of Arts and Sciences.

Sabri is the recipient of the 2008 APS Hildred Blewett award.

STAFF

Martina Rodriguez Sala - Research Specialist

Martina is an experimental physicist with a background in biology focused on the biomedical applications of aerogels. She has been working on the in vitro study of different types of aerogels as smart implants for the regeneration of peripheral nerve repair, with emphasis on the systematic study of the effects of stiffness and topography of those aerogels on neuronal cells. Aerogels investigated included polyurea crosslinked silica aerogels, carbon aerogels, superelastic shape memory aerogels, and alginate aerogels.

She has also worked on understanding the effects of electrical fields while using aerogel scaffolds with different electrical properties on neuronal cells.

Additionally, she is also working on are the imaging of those implants using diagnostic ultrasound imaging and X-Ray.

2019 - M.S. in Physics, The University of Memphis

2017 - B.S. in Biology and Physics, The University of Memphis