TomKat Center Welcomes a New Cohort of Postdoctoral Fellows to Stanford
The TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy has awarded three 2017 postdoctoral fellowships. These awards provide two years of funding and are intended to support exceptional early-career researchers working at the nexus of sustainable energy and food, water, transportation, human health and the environment.
Through a competitive global competition, these three fellows were selected based on their potential to make meaningful contributions to sustainable energy research. TomKat Center director Stacey Bent described how expanding Stanford’s research community builds opportunities for interdisciplinary and impactful research: “The new fellows come to Stanford with diverse backgrounds and experiences; the unique perspectives that they bring to bear on their research will provide new opportunities for collaboration and scientific advances.”
Chibueze Amanchukwu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
mentored by Professor Zhenan Bao, Chemical Engineering
Research Title: Materials Design for Novel Silicon and Lithium Metal-Based Batteries
Amanchukwu’s work will explore materials design for use in batteries that will increase the energy storage capacity from that of current lithium-ion batteries.
Bart De Baere (University of British Columbia)
mentored by Professor Kate Maher, Geological Sciences
Research Title: Optimizing Mineral Carbonation for Carbon Dioxide Sequestration
De Baere’s research will combine state-of-the-art experimental and modeling approaches to develop methodologies and expand fundamental understanding of how to optimize carbon dioxide sequestration practices.
Georgia Theano Papadakis (California Institute of Technology)
mentored by Professor Shanhui Fan, Electrical Engineering
Research Title: Thermal Management with Polarization-Insensitive Nanophotonic Design
Papadakis will explore and identify novel semiconductor and plasmonic materials for accelerating the rates of near-field heat transfer (heat-harvesting) and radiative cooling (heat-rejecting) using precise nanophotonic designs.
