People

Professor of Materials Science

Jeff Snyder is professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University. He was Faculty Associate in Materials Science at Caltech (2006-2015) and a Senior Member of the Technical Staff in the thermoelectrics group at JPL (1997-2006). He received his B.S. in physics, chemistry and mathematics at Cornell University and his Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University (1997) where he was a Hertz Fellow. His research interests include Solid State Chemistry, Physics and Engineering of thermoelectric and other energy materials. His current research focuses on Thermoelectric Materials and Engineering of Thermoelectric Devices. Since joining JPL/Caltech in 1997, Dr. Snyder has been investigating novel thermoelectric materials including antimonide Zintl phases, such as Yb₁₄MnSb₁₁and Zn₄Sb₃, Band Structure Engineering of thermoelectrics, Liquid-Like thermoelectric materials and nanostructured thermoelectric composites. He has developed new instruments for rapid hot pressing and high temperature thermal and electrical transport properties measurements of bulk materials. He has implemented novel empirical and analytical models for efficient power generation and cooling for both bulk and thin film devices. He has designed and tested elecrochemical MEMS micro-thermoelectric devices, portable power sources and energy harvesting systems for terrestrial and space applications. He has also participated as a consultant on a number of thermoelectric commercial projects. Jeff Snyder has over 500 publications on thermoelectric materials, devices and applications and distinguished as a Highly Cited Researcher (Thomson Reuters, Clarivate 2016-22). Jeff Snyder has been a board member and Treasurer for the International Thermoelectric Society. He has also been a Visiting Professor at SKKU University Korea, ITMO University Saint Petersburg, Wuhan University of Technology and the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics - Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Eleonora Isotta
Eleonora received her Ph.D. from University of Trento, Italy studying the effect of crystal structure on thermoelectric properties. Currently, Eleonora is working on local techniques for the measurement of thermal conductivity at grain boundaries.

Jean-Pierre Fleurial, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Jean-Pierre Fleurial has been group supervisor of the Materials and Device Technologies group at JPL which includes the Thermoelectrics Team. Dr. Fleurial earned his Ph.D. in solid state physics and materials science from the National Polytechnique Institute of Lorraine, France, in 1988. During his Ph.D., he developed new growth techniques and theoretical models demonstrating that high quality single crystals of Bi2Te3 can have ZT values close to those usually achieved only with solid solutions. In 1988, Dr. Fleurial came to JPL as a National Research Council Resident Research Associate and joined the permanent staff in 1990. He was first involved with the optimization of Si-Ge alloys for thermoelectric power generation. He has calculated ternary and quaternary phase diagrams of Si-Ge alloys with dopants, and also performed diffusion and solid solubility studies, liquid phase epitaxial growth of Si-Ge. More recently, Dr. Fleurial has been actively involved with the study of novel promising thermoelectric materials, in particular compounds with the skutterudite structure. Dr. Fleurial has served on the board of the International Thermoelectric Society.

Thierry Caillat, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Thierry Caillat is a senior member of the technical staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology and task leader for the JPL Thermoelectrics Team. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science in 1991 from the National Polytechnique Institute of Lorraine, France. He then received a National Research Council Fellowship to study new materials for thermoelectric applications at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He joined the permanent staff at JPL in 1994. His primary research interests have focused on the identification and development of new thermoelectric materials and devices. He has developed transport properties models to optimize these materials for thermoelectric applications. In the last five years, he has played a key role in identifying several families of thermoelectric materials with superior thermoelectric properties, including skutterudites and b-Zn4Sb3-based materials. More recently, he has been involved in the studies of the integration of some of these new materials into advanced, segmented unicouples with superior performance. He is the author of over 30 articles in refereed technical journals and over 40 articles in technical conference proceedings. Dr. Caillat holds two patents on new thermoelectric materials and has two patents pending on new thermoelectric devices. Dr. Caillat is chairman for the International Conference on Thermoelectrics in 2002 and has served on the International Advisory Board and Technical Program Committee of many International Conferences on Thermoelectrics since 1996. He has organized and chaired many sessions on thermoelectrics in various national and international conferences since 1993.

Sabah Bux, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Sabah K. Bux received her Bachelors of Science in Chemistry, Magna Cum Laude from California State Polytechnic University Pomona in 2005. She joined UCLA in 2005 as a graduate student working with Professor Richard Kaner on nanostructured materials for thermoelectric applications and received her Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry in 2010. She has earned UCLA Edwin Pauley, NSF-IGERT, NASA-GSRP fellowships and was a NASA student ambassador. Currently she is technologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the thermal energy conversion technologies group.

Chen-Kuo Huang, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Chen-Kuo Huang received his B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, National Tsing-Hua University (1978), M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, National Tsing-Hua University (1980), and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University (1988). Dr. Huang is a senior member of the technical staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Drymiotis joined JPL in 2015 and the Caltech TE group in 2012.  Prior to his arrival at Caltech, he was a member of the faculty at Clemson University where he conducted his NSF funded research on the development of novel thermoelectric structures for power generation applications.  He received his Ph.D. in condensed matter physics (2002) from The Florida State University and was a Seaborg Institute postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory.  He is currently investigating the synthesis, structural and thermoelectric characterization of various chalcogenides, and of complex composites based on these compounds.

Kent Griffith Postdoc 2018-22
U.C. San Diego
Kent studies battery materials and solid state NMR. At Northwestern and Argonne National Lab, Kent studied battery materials and applied his experience with NMR to thermoelectrics.

Alex Yue Lin (林悦) 2018-20
Professor at Fujian Institute of Research FJIRSM-CAS
Alex, was a Marie Curie Fellowship postdoc from Cambridge U. who studied thermoelectric polymers and composites by grain bundary engineering.

Jun Peng (彭军) Postdoc 2017-20
Professor at Xi'An Jiao Tong University
Jun Peng, with Ph.Ds from U. Wisconsin Madison and South China University of Technology, is studied theoretical models and applications of triboelectric materials and devices, and flexible thermoelectrics.

Max Dylla Ph. D. 2019
Citrine Informatics
Max showed that the complex tube-like Fermi surfaces, e.g. in perovskites, have low dimensional features. He developed an orbital phase diagram technique that provides a map to beneficial electronic structures of Half Heusler thermoelectrics materials.

Umut Aydemir Postdoc 2013-17
Professor at Koç University, Istanbul Turkey
Umut worked on discovering and understanding a number of new thermoelectric Zintl phases. Dr. Umut Aydemir received his Ph.D. at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, Germany studying intermetallic clathrates with Prof. Yuri Grin.

Thomas Chasapis Postdoc 2015-16
Phononic Devices
Dr. Thomas Chasapis studied at Northwestern jointly with Prof. Mercouri Kanatzidis for many years with speciality measuring optical properties and modeling thermoelectric materials.

Brett Kaufman CalPoly Pomona BS 2013-5

Brett worked on design and machining for prototype fabricatin, materials processing and measurement instrumentation.

Rochelle Weber Caltech BS 2015
Tesla Motors, Ph.D. Candidate
Rochelle synthesized and measuring thermoelectric properties of new Zintl Phase thermoelectric materials.

Sevan Chanakian, Caltech BS 2013-5
MSU and NASA/JPL
Sevan synthesized and measuring thermoelectric properties of new Zintl Phase thermoelectric materials

Wolfgang Zeier Ph. D. 2013
Professor University of Münster
Wolfgang, was postdoc and a joint student from Mainz, Germany and Carl-Zeiss fellow. He studied selenides for thermoelectrics with a focus on the influence of structural aspects and doping.

Heng Wang, Ph. D. 2014
Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology
Heng earned the 2014 Goldsmid award for his Ph.D. studies on the synthesis and optimization of Lead Selenide and Lead Telluride based thermoelectric materials with a focus on the effect of deformation potential in producing high efficiency materials.

Cheng-Chieh Li 2013-4 2015-6
ITRI Taiwan
A visiting Ph.D. student and postdoc from NTU Taipei, Cheng-Chieh Li studied metallization and mechanical properties for PbTe based thermoelectrics.

Haiyang Xia (夏 海洋)

JPL Technician

David Neff works on instrumentation for electrical transport measurements.

Prof. Vilupanur Ravi
Professor of Materials Science, Cal Poly Pomona

Teruyuki Ikeda Senior Scientist 2013
Professor of Materials Science, Ibaraki University
During the several years Teruyuki Ikeda conributed to the group he has been a PRESTO Researcher of Japan Science and Technology Agency. Dr. Teruyuki Ikeda recieved Dr. Eng. degree from Kyoto University (2000) for a study on thermodynamics, defects, and diffusion in intermetallic compounds. At Caltech he has been studied nanostructuring of bulk thermoelectric materials utilizing various sorts of phase transformations.

Gregory Pomrehn Ph.D. 2012
Research Engineer, Boeing.
Greg studied the phase stability of Zn-Sb phases from first principles thermodynamics and validating the results with experiments to detect the phase boundaries.

Professor, National Chiao Tung University
Ph.D. at National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan with National Science Council fellowship to study at Caltech. Hsin-jay studied the phase diagrams in the Pb-Ag-Sb-Te system to discover new thermoelectric microstructures.

Chongqing University of Science and Technology
At Caltech he studied lead telluride based thermoelectric materials.

Aaron Lalonde Postdoctoral Scholar 2012
Research Engineer
At Caltech, Aaron developed a new Rapid Hot Press system as well as developed new processing techniques for thermoelectric materials.

Shiho Iwanaga Postdoctoral Scholar 2011
Shiho Iwanaga was involved in the synthesis and characterization of thermoelectric materials, as well as design and building of scanning and bulk Seebeck measurement apparati for bulk and thin film samples.

Andrew (Drew) May, Ph. D. 2010
Staff Scientist, Oak Ridge National Lab
Drew studied the solid state physics of thermoelectric transport in a variety of materials including La3-xTe4. He was the recipiant of the 2010 Goldsmid Award and the Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prize for outstanding Ph.D. research.

Franck Gascoin, Postdoctoral Scholar 2005
Professor, CRISMAT Caen France
Franck studied the solid state chemistry of Zintl Phase thermoelectric materials.

Tristan Ursell, Undergrad 2002
Professor, University of Oregon
Tristan worked on TE coatings and module design that evolved into the discovery of the compatibility factor.

Undergrad and MS Researchers

Thomas Soldi Northwestern MS 2019
Sam Sorkin Northwestern MS 2019
Ming-Chiang CHANG Northwestern MS 2017
Xingyu Guo (郭星宇) Northwestern MS 2015-6
Neal Bansal, Caltech 2011-2
Nancy Chen, JPL 2005

Visiting Professors and Ph.D.

Friederike Reißig, Mainz, Germany (2018)
Karl F. F. Fischer, Aarhus, Denmark (2018)
YingCai Zhu, Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility (2017-8)
Lei Hu, University of Science and Technology Beijing (2016-8)
Han Li 李涵, Wuhan University of Technology, China (2013-6)
Wenhao Fan 樊文浩, Taiyuan University of Technology, China (2013-5)
Shaoping Chen 陈少平, Taiyuan University of Technology, China (2013-5)
Degang Zhao, University of Jinan, China (2014-5)
Xingkai Duan, Jiujiang University, China (2013-4)
Cheng-Lung Chen, Institute of Physics, Taiwan (2013-4)
Zhigang Chen, University of Queensland, Australia (2013-4)
Min Zhou 周敏, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, China (2013)
Chia-Chan Hsu, ITRI, Taiwan (2013)
Jianli Wang, Southeast University, China (2012)
Zhigang Chen, University of Queensland, Australia (2012)
Sima Aminorroaya, University of Wallongong, Australia (2012)
Min Chen, Aalborg University, Denmark (2011)
Prof. Tiejun Zhu, Zhejiang University, China (2011)
Harald Fjeld, University of Oslo, Norway (2011)
Praveen Siwach, National Physical Laboratory, India (2011)
Prof. Hirokazu Tatsuoka (Visiting Faculty), Shizuoka University, Japan

Visiting Students

Mingyi Wang, Shanghai, China (2018)
Estelle Sanz, Bordeaux, France (2014)
Jan-Hendrik Pöhls, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada (2014)​​
Christina Fraunhofer, LMU München, Germany (2014)​​
Jennifer Schmitt, Mainz University, Germany (2012-4)
Cheng-Chieh Li, National Taiwan University, Taiwan (2013-4)
Waruna P W D W, Aalborg University, Denmark (2013-4)
Jui-Shen Steven Chang 張睿紳, National Tsinghua University, Taiwan (2013)
Markus Nentwig, Leipzig University, Germany (2013)
Alexander Vargas, IPN University, Mexico (2013)
Stefan Maier, Leipzig/Munich University, Germany (2013)
Hanhui Xie, Zhejiang University, China (2013)
Ashoka Bali, Indian Institute of Science, India (2013)
Nelly Wirch, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany (2013)
Kasper Borup, Aarhus University, Denmark (2010-14)
Raghav Khanna, IIT Kanpur, India (2011)
Eugen Schechtel, Mainz University, Germany (2011)
Laura Haviez, ENSICAEN Caen, France (2011)
Maria Ibáñez i Sabaté, University Barcelona, Spain (2011)
Nils Kristiansen, Aalborg University, Denmark (2011)
Michael Böttger, University of Oslo, Norway (2010)
Tim Bleith, Mainz University, Germany (2010)
Espen Flage-Larsen, University of Oslo, Norway (2009)
Silvan Gariel, Ecole des Mines de Paris, France (2008)

Susan M. Kauslarich, U.C. Davis
Joseph Heremans, Ohio State University
Ken Kurosaki, Shinsuke Yamanaka, Osaka University, Japan
Douglas Medlin, Sandia Laboratories
Øystein Prytz, Johan Taftoe, University of Oslo, Norway
Svilen Bobev, U. Delaware, USA
Galen Stucky, UC Santa Barbara, USA
Eckhard Müller, German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Wolfgang Seifert, University of Halle, Germany
Raphael Hermann, University of Liege, Belgium; Jülich Germany
Andreu Cabot, Catalonia Institute for Energy Research, Spain
Christophe Goupil, ENSICAEN Caen, France
Xinfeng Tang, Wuhan University of Technology, China
Lidong Chen, Xun Shi, SIC-CAS Shanghai, China
Bo Brummerstedt Iversen, University Aarhus, Denmark
Chris Dames, U.C. Berkeley

Prag Batra, Harker High School, California