Research Staff
Postdoctoral Researchers
Claire Arthurs
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Claire Arthurs is a fourth-year graduate student researcher in the mechanical engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on probing and characterizing the mechanical response of polymer-electrolyte membranes for hydrogen fuel cells and electrolyzers, particularly in compression. Currently, she is working on compression-creep studies of PFSA membranes in a controlled environment and modeling membrane-electrode assemblies to simulate operational stresses in energy systems. Claire is co-advised by Dr. Ahmet Kusoglu in the Energy Conversion Group at LBL and Dr. Ravi Prasher in the ME department of UC Berkeley.
Before joining UC Berkeley, she earned a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. In her free time, Claire enjoys taking care of her plants, doing yoga, and surfing.
Paige Beck
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Paige is a 1st-year Ph.D. student in the mechanical engineering department at UC Berkeley. Her current work focuses on the integration of carbon-capture technology with a carbon dioxide methanation process and the development of electrocaloric cooling materials. Her research interests include energy storage and decarbonization.
Divya Chalise
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Divya is a 4th year PhD student working at the intersection of electrochemistry and heat transfer. His research work includes developing thermal metrology to study electrochemical systems. He has previously worked on thermal modeling of temperature rise and heat generation in batteries.
Sarah Chen
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Sarah is a 1st year PhD student currently working on a thermal switch project. She has previously worked on modeling absorption refrigeration and ML models for condensation heat transfer in her undergrad at Georgia Tech.
Mingxin Jia
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Mingxin’s current research in the thermal energy group mainly focuses on developing clean and energy-efficient desalination technologies and processes. The areas of particular interest include solar thermal forward osmosis using thermally responsive ionic liquid draw solutions and solute displacement fractional precipitation separation based on miscible organic solvents. With rising global freshwater demand and increasing water stress, these research developments may have applications in providing more reliable water sources through lowering the specific energy consumption of desalination and reducing high-salinity brine discharge.
Drew Lilley
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Drew’s research focuses on the intersection of electrochemical and thermal sciences for technologies ranging from energy storage to energy conversion.
Alondra Perez
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Alondra is a 4th-year Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering student at the University of California, Berkeley working on condensation phase change. She is currently working on creating a lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) to simulate the initial nucleation and growth of droplets to understand the physics of thermal transport of re-entrant superhydrophobic coatings to guide the future design of surfaces.
Logan Vawter
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Logan Vawter is a 1st-year graduate student researcher in the mechanical engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley. His research work is focused on thermochemical energy storage.
Nate Weger
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Nate's research focus has been on clean and affordable hydrogen production by methane pyrolysis. During his time at UC Berkeley and LBNL, he has designed, modeled, and built a lab-scale methane pyrolysis reactor capable of producing hydrogen and reaching temperatures over 2000 C. His goal is to solve the problem of carbon deposition in similar reactors, and to turn that technology into a new company if the work is successful. He is also studying new materials for high-temperature thermal energy storage systems.
Buyi Zhang
Graduate Student Research Assistant
Buyi is working on thermal management during the battery manufacturing process and cycling/fast charge. He is interested in battery modeling and the drying process in the roll-to-roll manufacturing of batteries and fuel cells.
Undergraduate Interns:
2022
Daniel Hunter Hawthorne
Rushabh Sailendra Shah
2021
Joseph Benedetti
Ethan Lee
Rushabh Shah
Clément Messeri
High School Interns:
2021
Aansh Devpura
Tavleen Kaur
Jessica Liu
Rupal Nimaiyar
Shreya Revanur
Postdocs:
Justin P. Freedman, Staff Product Engineer at Lam Research (LinkedIn)
Jonathan Lau, Battery Scientist at QuantumScape (LinkedIn)
Fuduo Ma, Materials Scientist at Avery Dennison (LinkedIn)
Dalia Martinez Escobar, Junior Research Specialist at University of California, Merced (LinkedIn)
Mauricio Solis de La Fuente, R&D Specialist at Universitat Jaume I, Spain (LinkedIn)
Hao Wang, Data Scientist at Swish Analytics (LinkedIn)
Peiyuan Yu, Assistant Professor at SUSTech, China (ResearchGate)
Bei Fan, Assistant Professor at Michigan State University (LinkedIn)
Zhi Huang, Assistant Professor at Wuhan University, China (ResearchGate)
Mahmoud Elzouka, Packaging Thermal Engineer at Intel Corporation (LinkedIn)
Akanksha Menon, Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech (LinkedIn)
Lin Yang, Assistant Professor at Peking University, China (LinkedIn)
Qiye Zheng, Assistant Professor at HKUST, China (LinkedIn)
Graduate Students:
Others:
Charles Geffroy, Sales Engineer at Tesla (LinkedIn)
Iwan Hächler, Doctoral Student at ETH Zürich (LinkedIn)