Materials Chemistry for Energy

Austin Paul-Orecchio / Batteries

Austin received his B.S. in Chemistry from Bethany College (WV) in 2019. He came to UT Austin to pursue a PhD in Chemistry. He is currently studying battery materials for lithium ion batteries in the Mullins Group.

Samantha Lauro / Batteries

Samantha received her B.S. in Chemistry from the Rochester Institute of Technology (NY) in December 2018. Sam travelled to UT-Austin to pursue a PhD in Chemistry and joined the Mullins group to work on battery materials and train in product development.

Ehren Eichler / Surface Chemistry and Catalysis

Ehren received his B.S in Chemistry in Spring 2018 from the University of Washington. An interest in surface science and catalysis led him to UT where he is working towards a PhD in Chemistry in the catalysis subgroup.

Yoon Jun Son / Electrocatalysis and Photoelectrochemistry

Yoon Jun received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Korea University and M.S. from Seoul National University in South Korea. His interest in electrocatalysis for clean energy conversion and storage brought him to UT Austin where he is currently working toward a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering with the photoelectrochemistry subgroup.

Michael Floto / Surface Chemistry and Catalysis

Michael received his B.S. in chemistry from Texas A&M University in spring, 2017. He joined the Mullins group the following fall to pursue his PhD in chemistry with an interest in surface science for catalysis. 

Kenta Kawashima / Photoelectrochemistry

Kenta Kawashima joined the Mullins group as a visiting researcher in October 2016. He received both his B.Eng. (2014) and M.Eng. (2016) in Environmental Science and Technology from Shinshu University. He is currently interested in crystal growth mechanisms and photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical water splitting activity of various inorganic crystals and crystal layers.

Sungmin Han / Catalysis

Sungmin received his Bachelors degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Hanyang University and also a Masters degree from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).  Sungmin is currently working toward a Ph.D. in Chemistry in the Catalysis subgroup.

Rodrigo Rodriguez / Lithium- and Sodium-Ion Batteries

Rodrigo received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from New Mexico State University in May 2015 and arrived at UT-Austin in Fall 2015 and joined the battery subgroup of the Mullins research group.

Kobe Vo / Electrocatalysis

Kobe is a first year Chemical Engineering major (as of Fall 2019). He is currently working with Kenta Kawashima on researching catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction.

Ruth Edison / Batteries

Ruth is a sophomore, Class of 2021, Physics major. She is currently working with Rodrigo with research on electrolytes for lithium metal batteries.

Anna Poterek / Electrocatalysis

Anna is an environmental engineering major in the Class of 2022. She is currently working with Bryan in the synthesis and study of new metal chalcogenide electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction.

Brian Beeson / Batteries

Brian Beeson is a second year Chemical Engineering Major.  He is working with Josh Pender on Lithium-Ion battery research.   He enjoys the great indoors, music, and cats.

Hrishi Srinivasan / Batteries

Hrishi is a freshman in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering from Katy, Texas, and is working with Jason Weeks on battery research.

John E. Davis / Surface Chemistry and Catalysis

John completed his Ph.D. in December 1996 with a dissertation entitled "Kinetics and Dynamics of Gas-Surface Interactions: Mechanisms of Dissociative Chemisorption and the Role of Molecular Intermediates." He started his career at Union Carbide/Dow Chemical in South Charleston, WV as a senior engineer in research and development, and later transferred with Dow Chemical to Freeport, TX where he became a senior process development specialist. John then joined Syngenta Crop Protection in Greensboro and became a group leader in formulation engineering technology. John is currently Global Product Supply Chain Manager. John and his wife Ana are both on the Advisory Board for the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at North Carolina State University.

Christopher Reeves

Ph.D. August 2001
"Kinetics and Dynamics of Adsorption on Single Crystal Semiconductor and Metal Surfaces"

Paul L. Tanaka / Air Quality and Thin Film Growth

Paul completed the work for his Ph.D. in May 2004 with a dissertation entitled "The Contribution of Chlorine Radicals to Tropospheric Ozone Formation in Southeastern Texas." Paul was co-supervised in his thesis work by Professors Dave Allen and Buddie Mullins. Paul joined ExxonMobil after finishing his graduate work and is currently in Corporate Strategic Planning with ExxonMobil. Paul and his wife Jocelyn have five children.

Sean M. McClure / Studies of Amorphous Solid Water

Sean finished his Ph.D. research and graduated in May 2006 and then joined the Intel Corporation in Portland, OR for about two years. He then moved to College Station, TX and worked as a postdoctoral fellow with the late Wayne Goodman at Texas A&M University from 2008-2010. Sean joined Merck as a research scientist in 2010 and lives in Philadelphia. Sean's dissertation is entitled "Transport Mechanisms in Nanoscale Amorphous Solid Water Films."

Todd R. Engstrom / Surface Chemistry and Catalysis

Todd joined the group in 2004 and completed an M.A. in Chemistry in December 2007. Todd is currently the Executive Pastor of Ministries at the Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, TX. Todd's thesis is entitled "Construction of a Surface Science System for the Study of Reactive Ballistic Deposited Thin Films."

Minta C. Akin / Studies of Amorphous Solid Water

Minta completed her Ph.D. in May 2008 and her dissertation was entitled "Low-energy Electron Driven Reactions in Layered Methanol/Amorphous Solid Water Films." Minta then joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a research scientist in the Shock Physics group where her research includes high pressure chemistry and physics.

David W. Flaherty / Catalysis and Surface Chemistry

Dave Flaherty finished his Ph.D. in 2010 and joined the group of Professor Enrique Iglesia at the University of California, Berkeley to pursue postdoctoral studies. After completing two-years of postdoc he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering continuing to work in the areas of advanced materials, catalysis, and surface chemistry. The title of Dave's dissertation is "Methods for Modifying the Physical and Catalytic Properties of Surfaces."

Son Hoang / Solar Photocatalysis

Son completed his Ph.D. research work in May 2013 and his dissertation was entitled "Nanostructured Materials for Solar Energy Conversion." He then joined the Brookhaven National Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow working in solar energy.

Paul R. Abel / Thin Film Battery Electrodes

Paul finished his Ph.D. in 2014 and joined Novacentrix in Austin, Texas in October 2014. Paul's dissertation was entitled "Chemical modification of nanocolumnar semiconductor electrodes for enhanced performance as lithium and sodium-ion battery anode materials. Paul and his wife Chia welcomed their first child, Victoria, into the family in 2014.

Yong-Mao Lin / Battery Electrode Materials

Yong-Mao finished his Ph.D. work in August 2013 and his dissertation is entitled "Nanostructured Anode Materials for Li-Ion and Na-Ion Batteries." He then joined Intel near Portland, OR.

David Chris Seets / Surface Chemistry and Catalysis

Chris completed all the research and writing for his Ph.D. in August 1997 and his dissertation is entitled "Mechanisms of the Dissociative Chemisorption of Methane on the (110) and (111) Surfaces of Iridium." He then joined Seagate Technology where he is currently Senior Director of Engineering and leading their wafer process development effort on what they hope will be the next generation of disc drives. They are using a technology called HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording). They are adding a laser to the recording head to help write the media and use semiconductor techniques (e.g., lithography, depositions, etches, etc.) to construct the reader and writer in addition to the laser light path (one wafer produces about 100,000 recording heads and takes several months to make with over 1300 different processing steps). The heat from the laser defines the track width and lowers the coercivity of the magnetic media and which can then be swept with a magnetic field over the heated spot to orient the direction (up or down which corresponds to a 1 or 0). This process is extremely challenging to implement, but hopefully we will all pick up a disk drive in about the 2018 to 2020 time frame that uses this technology. Chris has been working on HAMR for about 3 years (as of 2014) and has had the opportunity to work in many parts of the development organization with Seagate prior to his current assignment. Chris and his wife Michelle have two children.

Kyle Klavetter / Lithium- and Sodium-Ion Batteries

Kyle received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tulsa in 2010. He held a National Science Foundation Fellowship while he was a graduate student at UT-Austin pursuing research related to the safety and the performance of both lithium-ion and room-temperature sodium-ion batteries.  Kyle began his post-doctoral work at Sandia National Labs in January 2016.

Will Chemelewski / Solar photocatalysis

Will earned his B.S. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering Physics from the University of Illinois in December 2009. He held a National Science Foundation Fellowship while at UT-Austin.

Sean Wood / Battery materials

Sean received his Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2011. Sean was awarded an National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) while at UT-Austin.  Sean is now at Idaho National Engineering Laboratory researching batteries.

Oluwaniyi (Niyi) Mabayoje / Solar Photocatalysis

Niyi earned a B.S. in Chemistry from the City College of New York in 2013. He studied the synthesis of materials from earth abundant elements for the production of fuels from renewable sources during his time at UT-Austin. He completed his Ph.D. degree in May 2019.

Randall J. Meyer / Catalysis and Surface Chemistry

Randall received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in August 2001 and was a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Hajo Frend at the Fritz Haber Institut Der Max Planck Gesellschaft from 2001-2004. He then moved to the University of Virginia and conducted further postdoctoral studies with Professor Matt Neurock. Randall then joined the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2005 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011. Randall recently joined Exxon-Mobil as part of their Corporate Research Laboratories in Annendale, New Jersey. Randall's Ph.D. dissertation was entitled, "Catalytic Dechlorination." Randall's research as a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin was co-supervised by Buddie Mullins and Dave Allen. Randall and his wife Iliyana have two sons.

Edward Evans / Catalysis

Ed received a B.A. in Chemistry from Wabash College in May 2013. His interest in renewable energy brought him to the Mullins group during the following summer.  Ed held a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship while in Austin, defended his Ph.D. thesis in November 2018 and will formally graduate in May 2019.

Kimberley Pacheco

Ph.D. May 1997
"Epitaxial Silicon Growth Employing Supersonic Jets of Silane and Disilane"

Tae Kim / Surface Chemistry of Gold

Tae completed the Ph.D. in December 2005 and his dissertation was entitled "Molecular Beam Studies of Low Temperature CO Oxidation on Gold" after which he returned to Korea working for Samsung.

Huichao He / Photoelectrochemistry

Huichao was a full time student doing the combined Master-PhD program in chemical engineering and technology at Chongqing University, China when he joined us. With the support of China Scholarship Council, he joined the Mullins research group as co-joint student from September 2012 to September 2014.

Chang Woo Kim / Photoelectrocatalysis

Chang Woo received his Ph.D. in August 2012 from Sogang University in the Republic of Korea. After working as a research professor at the Korea Cente for Artificial Photosynthesis he joined the Mullins research group.  His research focusses on photocatalysts for water splitting.  Chang Woo accepted a position with Pukyung National University in Busan, South Korea in March 2017.

Jie Lin  / Batteries

Jie Lin joined the Mullins group as a visiting student in September 2016 and departed in March 2018. He has since received a Ph.D. from Xiamen University in China. He worked on nano/thin film materials for lithium-ion batteries and thin film lithium-ion batteries while in Austin.

Ding Tang / Solar Photocatalysis

Ding joined the Mullins group as a visiting student from 2014-2016. He was a Ph.D. candidate from Central South University in China. His research involved the preparation of nanostructured oxide photoelectrodes and their application in photoelectrochemical water splitting for hydrogen production.

Ben Meekins / Solar Photocatalysis

Ben received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of South Carolina and his Master's and PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Notre Dame. His graduate research focused on transfer processes that influence photovoltaics and photocatalysis. He joined the Mullins group after a postdoc in Allen Bard's group at the University of Texas. Ben is now a faculty member at the University of South Carolina.

Konda Shiva Reddy / Battery Electrode Materials and Safety

Shiva completed his M.S. in Chemistry from Osmania University, Hyderabad in 2008. He moved on to the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore for his Ph.D. studies. Currently he is working on safety mechanisms relating to batteries in collaboration with Professor Adam Heller.