I grew up in the bay area and then I went to college at Yale University in Connecticut. Having done my time back east, I was happy to come back west for graduate school at Cal, and have been here ever since. . .   My research group works mainly in two fields, metallurgy…

I first heard of MSE because my dad studied it back in college. When the time came to select a major, I originally thought to do chemical engineering because of how much I enjoyed studying chemistry in high school, but I really thought MSE sounded cooler and more unique. Turns out, when I started taking…

In high school I was a pretty big chem nerd (I still am); I found it mildly entertaining to just read through organic, inorganic, and physical chem books and bash through synthesis and spectra. I also wanted to work in a field that has positive environmental impacts. From some of my older friends who are…

I chose to study MSE because I really liked chemistry in highschool and was originally planning on studying chemical engineering. Over the summer, I read a book called “Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War” and the first chapter was about the properties of the uniform that soldiers wear to keep them dry, bug…

Why did you choose to study MSE? I love that MSE is at the interface of engineering and basic science. You get to work on real world applications while also looking and tinkering underneath the hood at the molecular/ crystal structure level.  What do you like most about MSE?  I like that you can pretty…

Where did you study? I studied physics in my undergraduate in Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and also got a MS degree in physics from Peking University, China. I came to the U.S. and obtained my PhD degree in the Applied Science and Technology Graduate Program in UC Berkeley. After a postdoc research at Harvard…

Where did you study? I went back to school after working and restarted my education at American River Community College in Sacramento, CA. Then I transferred to UC Berkeley and majored in Materials Science and Mineral Engineering and Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. Enjoying school, I decided to stay at…

Where did you study? I received a Master of Science in Engineering Physics at the Lund Institute of Technology in 1996. In the same year, I joined the Theoretical Physics Department at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm as a graduate student. Five years later, I defended my Ph.D. Thesis on ‘Thermodynamic and Dynamic…

Why did you choose to study MSE? I first learned about materials science during high school while working on solar cell research that happened to fall under the university’s MSE department. I still wasn’t entirely sure what MSE was, but really liked the lab I was part of, and started to learn more about the exciting…

Why did you choose to study MSE?  I was drawn to the field of MSE because of its interdisciplinary nature and broad areas of impact. I was first exposed to materials sciences and engineering through research experiences. As a Chemical Engineering undergraduate, I had the opportunity to do research that involved engineering materials for targeted…