Wiesner Group - People

Chris Orilall is from Vreed-en-hoop, Guyana. He did his undergraduate at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota majoring in chemistry and mathematics. Now a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the Department of Materials Science, he is working within the Cornell Fuel Cell Institute. He is developing new catalysts and electrode materials for proton exchange membrane fuel cells.

Hitesh Arora grew up in Delhi, India. He studied Chemical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. As a graduate student in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University, Hitesh joined the group in 2004 and works with hybrid gels to make devices for directed motion and cargo transport. He also works with block copolymer hybrid thin films.

Michelle Chavis earned her BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from Howard University. She is currently working jointly in both the Wiesner and Ober groups on applications of thin films of block copolymer templated materials.

Morgan Stefik grew up in various parts of Northern California including Portola Valley and Palo Alto. He earned a BE in Materials Engineering from Cal Poly SLO where he researched polymeric materials and organic solar cells. Morgan joined the Wiesner and DiSalvo groups in 2005. He is in the department of Materials Science and Engineering and works with the Cornell Fuel Cell Institute. His current work focuses on polymers for the structure direction of fuel cell electrodes.

Erik Herz joined the group in 2004, following a Fulbright Fellowship to work in the group of Ulrike Woggon at the University of Dortmund, Germany. Prior to that he earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Materials Science & Engineering from Virginia Tech where he performed research with R. O. Claus developing novel Quantum Dots. Currently he is exploring new synthetic methods for producing C dots and is interested in their applications in photonics and optical systems.

Teeraporn Suteewong is originally from Thailand. She earned her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in chemistry from Mahidol University. She joined the group in fall 2005. She is now developing functional silica nanoparticles for targeting and imaging, with applications in cancer biology.

Hiroaki Sai is from Yokohama, Japan. He joined the group in 2007 after earning his B.S.E. degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. He is currently interested in using structure-directing block copolymers for making nanoparticle-derived hybrid materials.

Ulrich Wiesner studied Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, and Irvine, California,. He gained his Ph.D. in 1991 with work at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P), Mainz, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the E.S.P.C.I. in Paris, France until 1993. He joined the Cornell MS&E faculty in 1999 following his Habilitation and became a Full Professor in 2005. He works at the interface between polymer science and solid state chemistry/physics with the goal of generating novel hierarchical and multifunctional hybrid materials. He is the co-founder of Hybrid Silica Technologies, Inc . and the recipient of multiple awards including the Carl Duisberg Memorial Award of the German Chemical Society.

Contact Information:

Prof. Ulrich Wiesner

email: ubw1@cornell.edu

Address:
330 Bard Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

Phone:
(607) 255-3487

Fax:
(607) 255-2365

Student Offices:
304 Thurston Hall
(607) 255-5547

258 Duffield Hall
(607) 254-8669

Wiesner Group - Cornell University

Zihui Li (we call her Cathy) grew up in Huaian, China and attended Peking University where she finished her B.S. degree in Chemistry. As a Chemistry Graduate Student at Cornell she joined the Wiesner group in 2007 and is currently working on block copolymer thin films for sensing and security applications.

Srikant K Iyer grew up in New Delhi, India. He did his B.Sc. In Chemistry at Delhi University and then M.Sc. In Chemistry at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He then completed an M.S. In Chemistry at University of North Carolina, Charlotte. There, he was the recipient of The Thomas Walsh Fellowship for his work in III-Nitride Quantum Dots. Currently a graduate student in the Dept. of Chemistry and Chemical Biology he joined the group in 2008 and is working on applications of silica nanoparticles.

Kahyun Hur was born in Korea and earned his BS and MS in Chemistry at Seoul National University. As a graduate student in Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell he joined the group in Fall 2008. He is currently working on block copolymer self assembly for making hybrid materials.

Rachel Dorin was born in Mountain View, California, and started her undergraduate career at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and completed a BS in Chemistry and in Biology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. As an undergraduate she worked at Sandia National Labs on nanostructured platinum for fuel cell catalysis. She is currently a graduate student in Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University where she received a McMullen fellowship. Rachel joined the Wiesner research group in the Fall of 2008 and her current research focuses on block copolymer membranes for water purification and desalination.

Christiane Kowatsch is a graduate student in Chemistry at Johannes-Gutenberg University at Mainz, Germany. She has been in the group since August, 2008. Currently she is working on the C-Dots side.

Delphine Fayol is from Paris,France. She attended the Ecole Polytechnique and worked on tissue engineering issues using magnetic nanoparticles prior to coming to Cornell.
She joined the group in fall 2008 and is now working on applications of silica nanoparticles for cancer biology.