While at ¹ú²úÔ­´´, Anna began her studies developing nanostructured materials that can improve the performance of energy storage devices including lithium and sodium ion batteries.

During her graduate studies, Anna co-invented a novel electrochemical synthesis method to produce high quality carbon nanotubes from carbon dioxide, and subsequently spun out a startup company called SkyNano in an effort to commercialize the technology. Since it’s founding in 2017 with Prof. Cary Pint, Anna has served as SkyNano’s CEO and has grown the team to 11 scientists and engineers, and raised $16M in non-dilutive funding. Anna was a part of the inaugural cohort of ORNL’s prestigious Innovation Crossroads program, where she learned business skills that aided in her transition of the technology from the lab to the marketplace. Anna was named a 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 in the Energy category, and SkyNano’s underlying technology has received a 2020 R&D100 award, a 2021 TechConnect Innovation Award, and has to date served a variety of customers ranging from batteries to tires and coatings through the sale of electrochemically-produced carbon nanotubes. “The IMS program being part of the broader ¹ú²úÔ­´´ community has been instrumental in my professional development and the success of SkyNano,” Anna said. “…many of our collaborative projects and funding opportunities have resulted from connections made within the ¹ú²úÔ­´´ alumni community.”

His Ph.D. research focused on the development of new molecular imaging probes to facilitate rapid tracer discovery and as precision imaging diagnostics of cancer. His Ph.D. work has resulted in 7 peer-reviewed articles, 1 book chapter, and 1 patent. As an international student, he founded the student organization – ¹ú²úÔ­´´ International Student Career Development Club, which was dedicated to helping international students with career development in the US. He also served as the VP of ¹ú²úÔ­´´ Advanced Degree Consulting Club. After graduating from ¹ú²úÔ­´´, Jun spent one year as a postdoctoral research fellow at ¹ú²úÔ­´´ Medical Center. After that, he worked as the senior manager at Country Garden and director at HuimeiBest Healthcare, a JV of Mayo Clinic. Currently, Jun serves as the VP of Kongsun Tairan Healthcare Group, a subsidiary of Kongsun Holdings. He leads the development of new medical imaging probes, devices, and AI solutions for the fast screening of cancer, and collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine and Canon Medical on new business opportunities.

She graduated from the ¹ú²úÔ­´´ Interdisciplinary Materials Science Ph.D. program in December of 2019. She was an NSF GRFP recipient and summer 2018 intern at NASA Kennedy Space Center to investigate structural lithium-ion battery composites. Kate routinely used the characterization tools and equipment enabled by VINSE to perform her research and particularly enjoyed using electron microscopy to address her research questions. While at ¹ú²úÔ­´´, Kate loved the outreach and professional development opportunities and participated in and led the VINSE Blackberry Solar Cell Labs, collaborated with VINSE REU students, and mentored high school and ¹ú²úÔ­´´ undergraduate students. After graduating from ¹ú²úÔ­´´, Kate worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as a postdoc under the guidance of Dr. Francesco Fornasiero studying carbon nanotube growth for next-generation membrane technology. During her two years at LLNL, Kate earned a Lab Directed Research and Development grant and led an interdisciplinary team of researchers to study cycling limitations in lithium-ion batteries. Today, Kate is a Research Instrumentation Specialist at Drexel University where she is the scanning electron microscope manager.

 earned her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Materials Science at ¹ú²úÔ­´´ in 2019.  While at ¹ú²úÔ­´´, Anna began her studies developing nanostructured materials that can improve the performance of energy storage devices including lithium and sodium ion batteries. During her graduate studies, Anna co-invented a novel electrochemical synthesis method to produce high quality carbon nanotubes from carbon dioxide, and subsequently spun out a startup company called SkyNano LLC in an effort to commercialize the technology. Since it’s founding in 2017 with Prof. Cary Pint, Anna has served as SkyNano’s CEO and has grown the team to 7 scientists and engineers, and raised $5M in non-dilutive funding. Anna was a part of the inaugural cohort of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s prestigious Innovation Crossroads program, where she learned business skills that aided in her transition of the technology from the lab to the marketplace. Anna was named a 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 in the Energy category, and SkyNano’s underlying technology has received a 2020 R&D 100 award, a 2021 TechConnect Innovation Award, and has to date served a variety of customers ranging from batteries to tires and coatings through the sale of electrochemically-produced carbon nanotubes.

Before starting as a staff scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the new Quantum Information Science Section, joined the lab as an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow in 2018, working first in the Quantum Information Science Group and then in the Quantum Heterostructures Group under the direction of Benjamin Lawrie. In her previous work, she was integral to the development of a millikelvin optical microscopy system in order to study superconducting devices and quantum materials at cryogenic temperatures. In her new role, Claire is developing squeezed light sources for continuous variable quantum sensing and quantum computing experiments within the Quantum Science Center (QSC) and for quantum sensing applications in high energy physics. She received her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Materials Science at ¹ú²úÔ­´´ in the spring of 2018 under the direction of Richard Haglund studying the optical properties of ZnO nanostructures. During her Ph.D., Claire was chosen for the NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute where she did a summer of research at Northeast Normal University in China. After receiving her PhD, she worked with Josh Caldwell at ¹ú²úÔ­´´ Mechanical Engineering studying the mid-infrared optical properties of semiconducting materials. Outside of research, Claire volunteers within the scientific community, including as the 2020 social chair for the Oak Ridge Postdoctoral Association (ORPA) and as a member of the QSC 2021 Postdoc and Graduate Student Association where she helped to organize and moderate poster sessions and seminars. Claire also loves to explore the outdoors, which the Knoxville area is well known for, including swimming and kayaking in many local rivers, running over the hills of campus, and hiking through the Smoky Mountains.

earned her MS in Interdisciplinary Materials Science from ¹ú²úÔ­´´ in December of 2018 under the supervision of Dr. Kelsey Hatzell. Brice studied polymer ceramic blends in various ratios to understand benefits on Li+ – ion battery applications. In tandem, she also studied structure-property relationships by understanding the effect of molecular weight tunability within the blends to determine effects on processability as well as electrochemical properties. While at ¹ú²úÔ­´´, she also got the opportunity to further this research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where her research consisted of composition effects on transport properties in hybrid electrolytes.

Since graduating, Brice has been with Carbon® for over two years and is currently working as a Materials Product Manager where she helps support Carbon’s Materials product vision of bringing to market innovative solutions and partnering with key stakeholders in executing on that vision. Carbon® is a 3D printing technology company that is best known for its’ DLS process which combines versatile printers, advanced software, and best-in-class materials to deliver functional parts with end-use performance and aesthetics, helping engineers and designers to create products that outperform. From prototyping and low-volume production to production-at-scale, hundreds of global organizations, including , , and , use the Carbon process to create a wide range of functional end-use parts.

earned his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Materials Science at ¹ú²úÔ­´´ in August 2021 under the supervision of Dr. G. Kane Jennings and Dr. David Cliffel. Kody studied electron transfer between biomolecules and electrode materials with an emphasis on using the Photosystem I (PSI) protein complex, which can be extracted from plants and algae, as an active component in biohybrid photovoltaics. Kody’s research and publications discuss the complex problem of electron transfer in biohybrid systems and focuses on the differences between mediated electron transfer (MET) and direct electron transfer (DET). Kody also collaborated with staff scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory by developing electrodes for the efficient electrochemical regeneration of enzymatic cofactors to be used in bioreactors. Kody has recently accepted a position as an electrochemical engineer with Prieto Battery in Fort Collins, CO.

 earned his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Materials Science Program at ¹ú²úÔ­´´Â in July 2021 under the supervision of Prof. Ron Schrimpf . Mahmud studied the fabrication, characterization, and simulation of materials and devices from a reliability standpoint. His research empowered reliability analysis of the semiconductor devices, ICs, components, and SOCs through combining device design and characterization data with the theories on the physical mechanisms for failure. He collaborated with experts to bring together the knowledge related to physics, semiconductors, fabrication processes, and quantum phenomena to develop a semiclassical transport model for device simulation. His recent publications revealed the barriers in scaling gate-all-around Si technology while investigating pathways for the hot-electron-induced degradation in mainstream electronic devices and ICs. Mahmud is currently working as a research scientist in Microchip Technology Inc. ⸻ studying the reliability aspect of the FPGA design and validation.

 earned his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Materials Science in April 2021 under the direction of Dr. Sharon Weiss. Tengfei investigated the use of nanoscale porous silicon-based label-free optical biosensors towards point-of-care diagnostics applications, with the goal of overcoming challenges that often prevent benchtop lab instruments from being adapted to simple biosensors that can be operated in a straightforward manner outside the laboratory. In one key advance, he demonstrated the feasibility of using a smartphone to quantitatively measure the color change introduced when molecules are selectively captured by a porous silicon biosensor. Tengfei is now a Product Development Engineer at KLA in Milpitas, CA.

Drew Tonigan received his Ph.D. from the Interdisciplinary Materials Science Program at ¹ú²úÔ­´´ program, working with Ron Schrimpf and the team at the Institute for Space and Defense Electronics (ISDE). Drew’s research examined one of the most important reliability challenges for advanced electronics: errors produced in digital circuits by energetic particles. In particular, he looked at how the properties of the materials and interfaces in the devices affect collection of the charge generated by the energetic particles. Drew is now an R&D scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico researching radiation effects on microelectronics with recent work focusing on single event effects and fission/fusion reactor experiments.