2021 Student and Postdoc Team Science Contest

2021 Meeting:

There are more than 1,600 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers involved in the current Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC), BES energy storage and fuels from sunlight Energy Innovation Hubs, BES Computational Materials Sciences awards (CMS), and BES Computational Chemical Sciences awards (CCS).

To highlight their accomplishments and further the development of the future scientific energy workforce, the Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) sponsored a Student and Postdoc Team Science Contest as part of the 2021 Virtual EFRC-Hub-CMS-CCS Principal Investigators’ Meeting on October 18-19, 2021. Each Director was invited to nominate a team of two or more graduate student and/or postdoctoral researchers to present a joint virtual talk about their center research. The DOE EFRC management team selected 9 teams to give talks.

The abstracts of all the finalist talks can be found on pages 60-68 of the PI Meeting Program Book. The teams are listed below. Team members are highlighted in red; presenters at the meeting are underlined.

Team Science Winners

(from left) Jessi E. S. van der Hoeven and Hio Tong Ngan

Entropic Control of HD Exchange Rates over Dilute Pd-In-Au Alloy Nanoparticle Catalysts

[EFRC – IMASC] Jessi E. S. van der Hoeven¹, Hio Tong Ngan², Austin Taylor¹, Nathaniel M. Eagan³, Joanna Aizenberg¹, Philippe Sautet²; Robert J. Madix¹, Cynthia M. Friend¹

¹Harvard University; ²University of California, Los Angeles; ³Tufts University

Integrated Mesoscale Architectures for Sustainable Catalysis (IMASC)

(from upper left) Zeyu Hui, Steven King, Xiao Zhang
(from lower left) Jingyi Wu, Zhengyu Ju

Tunable Porous Electrode Architectures for Enhanced Li-Ion Storage Kinetics in Thick Electrodes

[EFRC – m2M/t] Xiao Zhang¹, Zeyu Hui², Steven King³, Lei Wang⁴, Zhengyu Ju¹, Jingyi Wu¹, Kenneth J. Takeuchi^3,4, Amy C. Marschilok^3,4, Alan C. West², Esther S. Takeuchi^3,4, Guihua Yu¹

¹University of Texas at Austin; ²Columbia University; ³Stony Brook University; ⁴Brookhaven National Laboratory

Center for Mesoscale Transport Properties (m2mt)

(from left) Kaihang Shi and Yangzesheng Sun

Integrated computational engineering towards accelerated screening and optimization for nanoporous materials

[CCS – NMGC] Kaihang Shi¹, Yangzesheng Sun², J. Ilja Siepmann², Randall Q. Snurr¹

¹Northwestern University; ²University of Minnesota

Nanoporous Materials Genome Center (NMGC)

(from left) Zhenglu Li, Mit H. Naik, and Emma C. Regan

Nature of Novel Moiré Exciton States in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Heterobilayers

[CMS – C2SEPEM] Mit H. Naik^1,2, Emma C. Regan^1,2, Zhenglu Li^1,2, Felipe H. da Jornada³, Feng Wang^1,2, Steven G. Louie^1,2

¹University of California at Berkeley; ²Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; ³Stanford University

Center for Computational Study of Excited-State Phenomena in Energy Materials (C2SEPEM)

(from left) Rebecca D. McAuliffe, Guanglong Huang, Victoria Petrova, and Matthew J. McDermott

Thin Film Paradigm to Probe Diffusion during Solid-State Metathesis Reactions

[EFRC – GENESIS] Rebecca D. McAuliffe¹, Guanglong Huang², David Montiel², Apurva Mehta³, Ryan C. Davis³, Victoria Petrova⁴, Matthew J. McDermott⁵, Katie L. Browning¹, James R. Neilson⁶, Kristin A. Persson⁵, Ping Liu⁴, Katsuyo Thornton², Gabriel M. Veith¹

¹Oak Ridge National Laboratory; ²University of Michigan; Ann Arbor; ³SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; ⁴University of California-San Diego; ⁵University of California, Berkeley; ⁶Colorado State University

A Next Generation Synthesis Center (GENESIS)

(from upper left) Emily Nienhuis and William Smith (from lower left) Andrew Wildman and Lixin Lu

Radiolysis across multiple timescales in extreme environments

[EFRC – IDREAM] Lixin Lu¹; Emily Nienhuis², Andrew Wildman¹, Xiaosong Li1,², William Smith³, Aurora Clark^3,2, Jay LaVerne⁴, Thomas Orlando⁵, Greg Kimmel², Xin Zhang², Carolyn Pearce^2,1, Linda Young⁶

¹University of Washington; ²Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; ³Washington State University; ⁴Notre Dame University; ⁵Georgia Institute of Technology; ⁶Argonne National Laboratory

Interfacial Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials (IDREAM)

(from left) I-Ting Chiu and Shenli Zhang

Harvesting oxygen vacancies in cobaltites for low power neuromorphic devices

[EFRC – Q-MEEN-C] Shenli Zhang¹, I-Ting Chiu², Min-Han Lee³, Shaobo Cheng⁴, Brandon Gunn³, Hien Vo¹, Mingzhen Feng², Larry Heki⁵, Zhen Zhang⁶, Yahya Mohtashami⁵, Pavel N. Lapa³, Padraic Shafer⁷, Alpha T. N'Diaye⁷, Apurva Mehta⁸, Shriram Ramanathan⁶, Jon A Schuller⁵, Yimei Zhu⁴, Alex Frañó³, Ivan K. Schuller³, Yayoi Takamura², Giulia Galli^1,9

¹The University of Chicago; ²University of California, Davis; ³University of California, San Diego; ⁴Brookhaven National Laboratory; ⁵University of California, Santa Barbara; ⁶Purdue University; ⁷Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; ⁸SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; ⁹Argonne National Laboratory

Quantum Materials for Energy Efficient Neuromorphic Computing (Q-MEEN-C)

(from left) Wanyue Peng, Mohamadali Malakoutian, Daniel Field, and John Wright

Thermal Properties of Ultrawide-band-Gap Nitride Material Heterostructures

[EFRC – ULTRA] W. Peng¹, J. Wright², M. Malkoutian³, D. Field⁴, R. Wilson¹, D. Jena², H. G. Xing², S. Chowdhury³, M. Kuball⁴

¹Univerisy of California – Riverside; ²Cornell University; ³Stanford University; ⁴Univeristy of Bristol

Ultra Materials for a Resilient, Smart Electricity Grid (ULTRA)

(from left) Mawuli Deegbey and Walter Johnsen

Using Di-Copper Molecular Compounds to Investigate Intermediates in CO Reduction to C₂ Products

[Hub – CHASE] Mawuli Deegbey¹, Walter Johnsen², Karen I. Goldberg², Elena Jakubikova¹, Thomas E. Mallouk²

¹North Carolina State University; ²University of Pennsylvania

Center for Hybrid Approaches in Solar Energy (CHASE)