Dr. Sungho Jeon
E-mail: sjjeon@seas.upenn.edu
Biography:
Dr. Sungho Jeon earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Information Systems from the University of Tokyo in 2017. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the NBMS Lab at Hanyang University. He joined as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Penn in September of 2021.
Research Interests:
His research focuses on applying and developing in situ (S)TEM techniques to study the synthesis process of nanoparticles. He is also interested in correlating the structure of catalysts to their properties. He is currently working in CHASE, developing molecule/semiconductor hybrid photoelectrodes for cooperative sunlight-driven generation of liquid fuels from carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water. Here, he studies the nanodroplet-based synthesis process of Cu nanoparticles and molecular catalysts attached to semiconductor support.
Dr. Rajeev Kumar Rai
E-mail: rajeevkr@seas.upenn.edu
Biography:
Dr. Rajeev has received his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore in 2021. During his Ph.D. he worked in Nanomaterials & Microscopy group where his work was to design synthesis protocol for 2 D nanostructures with specific applications and their characterization using Transmission Electron Microscopy techniques. For a brief period, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Functional Thin Films and Electron Microscopy Lab,]CeNSE, IISc, where his role was to investigate the thin film oxides using TEM techniques. He joined as Postdoctoral Research Associate at University of Pennsylvania in June 2022.
Research Interests:
His research focuses on understanding the reaction mechanism for CO2 sequestration in minerals and other gas phase catalytic reactions using in-situ (S)-TEM imaging and spectroscopy. He is also interested in phase transformation and atomic inter diffusion using in-situ (S)-TEM methods. Apart from in-situ methods, he is also interested in other electron microscopy techniques including electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) and 4D-STEM.
Dr. Pawan Vedanti
E-mail: vnpawan@seas.upenn.edu
Biography:
Dr. Pawan Vedanti earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Wayne State University in 2020. During his Ph.D., he investigated grain growth theory and experiments to hypothesize “4th law of thermodynamics” proving entropy decay during grain growth. In addition to this, he has conducted various experiments for Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS) characterization using Digital Image Correlation for multi-million dollar AutoSteel Partnership projects. He has worked as Research Scientist for a company based out of Dayton contributing to various US government and defence SBIR/STTR projects in the area of high throughput experimentation. He has also worked as a Senior Data Scientist – Machine Learning for a large conglomerate in Cincinnati focusing on credit card fraud identification in real time. Before joining the Stach group in May 2024, he was employed as Director of Business Development for a startup in Bengaluru building digital twins for aerospace, defence and manufacturing industries.
Research Interests:
His research focuses on automating the quantification of carbon nanotubes images acquired using TEM in addition to automating the image acquisition of nanotubes. He is also developing ML algorithms to automate the process of TEM image analysis for industrial applications.
Dr. Jongbeom Kim
E-mail: jongbeom@seas.upenn.edu
Biography:
Jongbeom Kim earned Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Seoul National University in 2024. In November 2024, he joined the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoctoral research associate.
Research Interests:
He develops advanced electron and ion microscopy techniques to study soft materials under cryogenic conditions. He is a trainee in MRSEC IRG2, Bioinspired Engineering of Condensed Protein Mesophases and Cell Collectives. He studies the microscopic structural properties of liquid crystal polymers and biomolecular condensate driven by liquid-liquid phase separation.
