Wiesner Group - People

The Wiesner Group

	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.

	Current Postdocs
	Tobias Hoheisel grew up in Tübingen, Germany, and studied chemistry at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. He received his Ph.D. in Material Science from ETH Zürich in 2011 and thereafter joined the Wiesner group as a Postdoc.

	Current Graduate Students
	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.
	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.
	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 metal nanoparticle self-assembly.
	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 is from Albuquerque, NM. She completed a BS in Chemistry and in Biology at the University of New Mexico and as an undergraduate worked on nanostructured platinum for fuel cell catalysis at Sandia National Labs. She joined the Materials Science and Engineering department at Cornell University in 2008 where she received the McMullen and NSF GRFP fellowships to pursue her PhD. Rachel's current research focuses on block copolymer membranes for water purification and desalination.
	Juho Song is from South Korea and he earned his BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from Pohang University of Science and Technology. Currently as a graduate student in the Chemical Engineering Department, he is working on the mesoporous metal oxide materials for fuel cell applications in the Wiesner group.
	Kwan W. Tan is from Singapore and joined the group in 2009. He majors in Materials Science and completed his MEng at MIT, MA, SM at National University of Singapore and BEng at Nanyang Technological University. He is currently working on combining soft-matter self-assembly-directed nanostructure fabrication with laser thermal processing for energy conversion applications, under Profs Uli Wiesner and Michael O. Thompson.
	Yao Sun was born and raised in Beijing and earned a BS in Materials Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University. Yao is currently a graduate student in MSE and joined the group in Fall 2009. She is now working on functional silica nanoparticles.
	Jennifer Drewes is from San Juan Capistrano, California and earned a BS in Chemistry from the University of California Santa Barbara. She joined the group in 2009 and is working on functional core-shell silica nanoparticles.
	Christina Cowman is from St. Paul, Minnesota. She earned a BS Chemistry and BS Physics from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2009. She joined the group in Fall 2009. She is currently working jointly with the Wiesner and Coates (Chemistry) groups making structure directing polymers for nanoparticle-hybrid materials.
	Kai Ma comes from Shenzhen, China. He earned his B.S. degree in physics from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and then joined the group in 2009. He is currently working on applications of functional core-shell silica particles.
	Spencer Robbins was born and raised in New York State and received his BS in Chemistry with an emphasis in Materials Science at Binghamton University in 2009. He is a joint student with the DiSalvo Group in Chemistry and joined the Wiesner Group Spring 2010. Spencer works on the structure direction of nitrides and crystalline metal oxides via block copolymers.
	Tom Swisher is from northern California. He earned a BS in Physics and a BA in Applied Mathematics from Humboldt State University in 2010 and joined the group in that year. He is interested in metamaterials, simulation, and block copolymer self-assembly for hybrid materials.
	Yibei Gu grew up in Zhangjiagang, China and received her BS in Materials Science at Fudan University. As a graduate student in MSE department at Cornell, Yibei joined the group in fall 2010. She is currently working on block copolymer membranes for water purification and desalination.
	Joerg Werner grew up in Berlin and Frankfurt, Germany. He studies Chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg - University in Mainz. He visited the group in fall 2009 for a semester abroad. He joined the group in Spring 2011. Joerg is working on mesoporous carbon from block copolymer selfassembly as electrode material.
	Dahlia Musharrafieh
	Xian Shi is from Liaoning, China. He earned his BS in Materials Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University. As a graduate student in MSE at Cornell, he joined the group in Fall 2011. His current research focuses on gold-silica core-shell nanoparticles.
	Rachel Kenion grew up in NE Pennsylvania. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from New York University and B.E. in Chemical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology through a dual-degree program in 2011. She started her graduate career in the CBE department at Cornell that Fall and joined the Wiesner group in the spring of 2012. She is interested in the functionalization of mesostructured inorganic templates from block copolymer self-assembly for next-generation energy technologies.

	Current Undergraduate Researchers
	Daniel Shae
	Deborah Liu
	Stacey Saba

	Visiting Scholars
	Prof. Rodrigo Orefice was born in Belo Horizonte/Brazil and received his PhD degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Florida in 1997. Since then he has been working as a professor at the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering in the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. He is spending his sabbatical in 2011/2012, studying the mechanical behavior of nanocomposites derived from block copolymers.

Wiesner Group - Cornell University