Materials Research Society: Graduate Student Awards
MRS Graduate Student Awards are intended to honor and encourage graduate students whose academic achievements and current materials research display a high level of excellence and distinction. MRS seeks to recognize students of exceptional ability who show promise for significant future achievement in materials research. Information regarding upcoming Graduate Student Awards is available at MRS Material Research Society Fall 2015 Awards.
Gold Category
Xiaofei Ye
"Xiaofei is a 6th year PhD student, co-advised by Prof. Chueh and Prof. Melosh. He received his B.S. in physics from Peking University in 2010. Xiaofei has been devoted to the research in artificial photosynthesis which converts solar energy into chemical energy, such as hydrogen, using nanoscale semiconductor devices, just like plants producing sugar under sunlight. His extensive investigation on the thermally-activated minority carrier collection disclosed the importance of thermal energy in the process of solar-to-fuel conversion, which is contrary to the prevailing understanding in photoelectrochemistry. His result represents an attractive alternative to the predominant nanostructuring pathways for enhancing the photo activity."
Andrew Scheuermann
"In new work published in Nature Materials and presented at the MRS conference, Andrew Scheuermann and Paul McIntyre accomplish a record performance for corrosion-resistant silicon photoanodes and develop general design principles for how to maximize the photovoltage in systems that involve catalysts, insulator protection layers, and semiconductors to absorb light. This work is a major step forward in realizing an overall materials solution to artificial photosynthesis, converting greenhouse gases into usable chemicals and fuels, and is rooted in the advances in atomic layer deposition (ALD) that have been developed in Paul McIntyre's group. Scheuermann, the lead author, was given the Gold Award from MRS in recognition of this work along with a number of other related works investigating these protection layers."
Silver Category
Steven Madsen
"Steven won the MRS Silver graduate student award for his work using electron energy loss spectroscopy in the scanning transmission electron microscope. With this technique, he has measured electron oscillations to probe the optical properties of gold nanoantennas with nanometer resolution. His work studying the effects of size, shape, and local chemistry of the structures have allowed him characterize and improve the signal strength of surface enhanced Raman scattering nanoparticles which have applications in sensing, security and medicine."
The Graduate Stduent Awards gave $400 prize for the Gold and $200 for Silver, and were presented on December 2, 2015.
