Dr. Ella Pek joined Idaho National Laboratory (INL) as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in May 2023. Dr. Pek earned her B.S. and M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley with Honor in 2013 and 2014, where she did her research in the Dubon group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She then continued to do her doctorate study at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and earned her Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering in 2019. During her graduate studies under Professor David Cahill, she utilized time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR) to characterize various material systems. Prior to joining INL, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Zhao group at University of Maryland, College Park, where she re-built a TDTR system and did characterization of thermodynamic properties of ATF (Accident Tolerant Fuel) cladding. She brought her expertise in the laser-based measurements of thermal energy transport to TETI, where she characterizes thermal transport of various advanced nuclear fuel systems and the effects of defects on them.
Saqeeb Adnan is a graduate research associate in Marat Khafizov’s group at The Ohio State University. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. Saqeeb’s work is aimed at improving our understanding of thermophysical properties in materials used in nuclear energy applications as well as 2D nanomaterials and perovskites. His research focuses on modeling the interaction of defects with phonons and its impact on thermal conductivity. In addition to modeling, he utilizes different experimental techniques like Raman and laser thermoreflectance to characterize thermal transport in these materials.
Lin-Chieh is a Ph.D. student in Material Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds a B.S. degree in Chemistry from National Cheng Kung University and an M.S. degree in Chemistry from Stony Brook University. His research experience includes studying molten salt corrosion using synchrotron techniques as a graduate student at Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Since moving to Madison, he has shifted his focus to computational research, specifically multiscale modeling and simulation of materials kinetics in irradiation and corrosive environments. As part of the TETI, his work involves studying the interaction of defects in irradiated materials using molecular dynamics and kinetics Monte Carlo methods. By using these techniques, the material behavior can be simulated in larger timescales and spatial scales.
