Introducing the Nanoscale Horizons Community Board

Our early career researcher Advisory Board

After the successes of the Materials Horizons Community Board launched last year, we have created a Community Board for Nanoscale Horizons. These Board members will provide invaluable feedback regarding journal activities, as well as being ambassadors for the journal.

We requested nominations from our Board members, as well as from the wider academic community over the summer, and were thrilled with the high calibre of candidates nominated.

We are now delighted to announce the members of the Nanoscale Horizons Community Board. The Board consists of 32 international researchers at different stages of their early careers, ranging from PhD candidates to Associate Professors.

Read more about our Board members below. We have also expanded the Materials Horizons Community Board, find out more here.

Julian Bergueiro Álvarez
Dr Julian Bergueiro received his BS and MS in Chemistry from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in 2007 and 2008, respectively. In 2013 he received his PhD from USC under the supervision of Prof. S. Lopez. In 2012 he joined the group of Prof. R. Riguera to work on the synthesis and characterization of stimuli-response helical polymers and poly(phenylacetylene)s@gold nanoparticle nanocomposites. He joined Prof. M. Calderon group in 2013 to carry out his postdoctoral research at Freie Universität Berlin. He was awarded with a Dahlem International Net-work Postdocs Fellowship to develop gold based thermoresponsive nanogels as nanocarriers.
Simone Bertolazzi
Simone is postdoctoral researcher (Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow) at the Institut de Science et d’Ingénierie Supramoléculaires in Strasbourg, France, working with Prof. Paolo Samorì. He received a B.S. degree in Engineering Physics from Politecnico di Milano (2007) and M.S. degrees from Politecnico di Milano (2010) and École Polytechnique de Montréal (2011). He then obtained a PhD in Physics from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where he conducted his doctoral work in the group of Prof. Andras Kis. His current research activities focus on hybrid multifunctional materials based on two-dimensional crystals and molecular systems.
Randy Carney
Dr. Randy Carney is a postdoctoral scholar working in the lab of Prof. Kit Lam at the University of California Davis Medical Center, where he leads the extracellular vesicle research team. He specializes in nano-characterization schemes and exosome isolation. Recently, Dr. Carney and his team have developed methods for optical trapping and Raman characterization of single vesicles derived from a variety of tumor biofluids. Dr. Carney also has an extensive background in gold nanoparticle synthesis, characterization, and cell delivery, all topics of his Ph.D. work with Prof. Francesco Stellacci (MIT/EPFL).
Jerry Chang
Jerry is currently a Research Associate at the Rockefeller University. He completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2012 from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee under the direction of Sandra J. Rosenthal and Randy D. Blakely. His graduate works led him to the laboratory of Nobel laureate Paul Greengard, where he continues his works on developing fluorescent nanoprobes and ultrasensitive imaging approaches for molecular studies of major depressive disorder and Alzheimer’s disease.
Ciro Chiappini
Dr Chiappini has been a Lecturer in the Department of Craniofacial Development and Stem Cell Biology at King’s College since July 2016. He received a Ph.D. from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin in 2011 and moved as Newton International Fellow and then Marie Curie Fellow in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London. His research focuses on developing nanomaterials with functional biointerfaces for tissue engineering and precision medicine. His interests focuses on micro/nanofabrication, micropatterning, and nanoscale engineering of environmental cues to manipulate the cell microenvironment.
Jonathan De Roo
Jonathan De Roo obtained his PhD at Ghent University in 2016 and is currently at Columbia University as a post doc in the Owen group. Using NMR spectroscopy, he mainly studied the surface chemistry of metal oxide nanocrystals, uncovering the NC(X)2 binding motif. However, he also investigated the surface chemistry and optical properties of CsPbBr3 perovskite NCs in the Kovalenko group, ETH Zürich. Currently, he is working on elucidating nanocrystal synthesis mechanisms and studying their inorganic core with solid state NMR and pair distribution function analysis (PDF).
Chandra Dixit
Dr. Chandra K Dixit was awarded his PhD in Biotechnology from Dublin City University in 2012. His research focus is nanobiosensing, point-of-care diagnostics, and cancer biology. Currently, he is working as a post-doctoral associate in the area of prostate cancer diagnosis using microfluidic electrochemical biosensors for POC at the Department of Chemistry, University of Connecticut. His research ranges the areas of biosensors, microfluidics, and disease diagnostics and he has won several international fellowships including Marie-Curie grant. Outside research, he is mostly interested in astronomy and physics while photography and sketching are his other hobbies.
Qingliang Feng
Dr. Qingliang Feng is an Associate Professor at the School of Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU),Xi’an, China. Dr Feng obtained his BS degree in Chemistry from Lanzhou University in China and obtained his PhD degree in Analytical Chemistry also from Lanzhou University. During his PhD studies, he joined Prof. Jin Zhang’s group at Peking University as a  training PhD candidate, he then received in PhD degree in Jun 2016. Immediately after this, in Aug 2016, he worked as an Associate Professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU). His research focuses on PVD growth and bandgap engineering of two dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides in the fields of photodetector and nanodevices.
Chunxian Guo
Dr Chunxian Guo works as a Professor in the Institute of Advanced Materials and Devices, Suzhou University of Science and Technology. He obtained his Bachelor and PhD degree (Supervisor of Prof. Changming Li) from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has worked as postdoctoral fellow in Case Western Reserve University, US (Supervisor of Prof. Liming Dai) and in the University of Adelaide, Australia (Supervisor of Prof. Shizhang Qiao). His research focuses on two-dimensional materials and their atomic/molecular engineering for electrochemical and photoelectrochemical systems.
Marilena Hadjidemetriou
Marilena obtained her BSc in Pharmacy at the University of Athens, Greece in 2012. For her final year dissertation she conducted research on the ‘Preparation, physicochemical characterization and study of self-assembly of liposomes incorporating dimethoxycurcumin’. In 2013 she completed her MSc in Drug Delivery with Distinction at the UCL School of Pharmacy, University College London. For her MSc thesis she explored the use of peptide nanofibres for the delivery of siRNA. Marilena joined the Nanomedicine Lab at the University of Manchester as a Marie Curie Early Stage Fellow and full-time PhD student under the PATHCHOOSER programme. Her research is focused on the formation of protein corona around nanoparticle-based delivery vehicles and its potential exploitation as a diagnostic tool.
Liangliang Hao
Dr. Liangliang Hao received her B.S. from Nankai University in 2006 and obtained her M.S. degree from the University of Waterloo. From 2009, she enrolled in the Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences program at Northwestern University completing her doctoral studies in Prof. Chad Mirkin’s laboratory. Her dissertation research was at the interface of biology and materials science, and focused on the synthesis, characterization, and application of nanostructures for nucleic acid therapeutics.  After earning her Ph.D. in 2015, Dr. Hao joined Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia’s team at MIT for postdoctoral training. She is working to further develop therapeutic delivery solutions from a multidisciplinary viewpoint, with a continuous interest in exploring the diagnostic and therapeutic capacities of nanomaterials against tumor metastasis.
Shuaidong Huo
Shuaidong received his Bachelor’s degree in Materials Science from the East China Institute of Technology in 2010, and then obtained his Master’s degree from the Tianjin Polytechnic University, China in 2013. Shuaidong went on to receive his PhD from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), under the supervision of Professor Xing-Jie Liang. His research focuses on the biological effects of nanomaterials and how these effects are involved in the delivery of nano-drugs. He uses different nanoparticles as models mimicking nano-drugs to provide significance guidelines for the further study of nanomedicine.
Johannes Jobst
Johannes Jobst is a postdoctoral VENI fellow at Leiden University, Netherlands and Columbia University, New York, USA. His research focusses on the electronic properties and charge transport in Van der Waals materials. For that purpose, he develops new methods based on low-energy electron microscopy and creates heterostructures of graphene, boron nitride and transition metal dichalcogenides. Johannes received his PhD from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany in 2012 for magnetotransport investigations of correlated electron effects in graphene on silicon carbide. He is lecturer at and leader of ‘Deutsche Schuelerakademie’ summer schools for highly skilled students.
Debin Kong
Debin Kong received his BS and his PhD on Applied Chemistry from Tianjin University under the guidance of Prof. Linjie Zhi and Prof. Quan-Hong Yang. Now he continues his scientific research as an Assistant Professor in the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology. His research interests mainly focus on the design and fabrication of novel carbon nanostructures and novel electrode materials for energy conversion and storage.
Sachin Kumar
Sachin Kumar B received his undergraduate degree (B.E.) in Biotechnology from M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, India in 2009. He worked as a project associate (2009 – 2011) on a project funded by Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR) Govt. of India. He then obtained his PhD degree from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India in 2016. His doctoral research focuses on designing bioactive and multifunctional graphene polymer composites for bone tissue regeneration. His particular interest is in synthesizing chemically functionalized and metallically decorated hybrid graphene substrates for tissue engineering applications. Dr. Sachin Kumar B is currently working as a Research Associate in the Materials Engineering department under the supervision of Dr. Kaushik Chatterjee at IISc, India and has recently been awarded the Humboldt postdoctoral Fellowship at Max Planck.
Kohei Kusada
Kohei is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Science at Kyoto University. Kohei received his B. S. and M. S. from Kyushu University in 2008 and 2010, respectively, and went on to receive his Ph. D. from Kyoto University under the supervision of Prof. Hiroshi Kitagawa in 2013. He studied and worked as a JSPS research fellow (DC1) from 2010 to 2013. After a period at Asahi Kasei Chemicals Co. as a researcher (2013 – 2014), he joined Kyoto University as an Assistant Professor. His current research interests focus on the design and synthesis of functional metal nanoparticles with crystal structures unobtainable in the bulk state and investigating their properties including catalysis.
Bo Li
Bo Li is currently a postdoc with Prof. Charles M. Schroeder in Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2015 with Prof. Zhiqun Lin. His research interests include self-assembly of nanomaterials, nanomaterial synthesis using organic templates (e.g., DNA, self-assembled block-copolymer micelles, unimolecular star-like block-copolymers) or by conventional wet-chemistry strategies, theoretical modeling and numerical simulation. He is particularly interested in realization of artificial neuron and artificial brain structure using “bottom-up” self-assembly.
Li Li
Dr Li Li is now an Senior Engineer in Advanced Technology Development Department in GlobalFoundries. Dr. Li received his Ph.D. degree in Department of Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2012. He is a materials scientist/engineer with expertise in metallurgical and metal oxide materials processing, as well as their applications in solar energy conversion, energy storage, microelectronics fabrications, etc.
Xueqin Liu
Xueqin Liu is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan). He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) in 2016. He spent two years in Prof. Zhiqun Lin’s group at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a visiting PhD student in 2014. His research interests include the preparation of metal oxide nanoarrays-based nanocomposites and their application in solar energy conversion and environment remediation.
Jia Liu
Dr. Liu obtained his B.S. from Fudan University in China in 2009, his Ph.D. from Harvard University advised by Dr. Charles M. Lieber in 2014, and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford working on wearable electronics, bioelectronics for precision medicine and genetically-targeted brain-machine interface with Dr. Zhenan Bao and Dr. Karl Deisseroth.
Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane is currently the AMAX Career Development Assistant Professor of materials science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a leading expert in self-assembly and soft matter, as well as composite materials consisting of biomolecules, polymers, and inorganic nanoparticles. His research focuses on directed assembly techniques to program composition and structure at the nano- and mesoscale, utilizing both soft matter techniques and inorganic nanostructures to generate multifunctional composites with novel optical, mechanical, and chemical properties.
Kristy McKeating
Kristy is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Riverside. She carried out her undergraduate studies at the University of Strathclyde, where she also received her PhD in 2013 under the supervision of Professor Karen Faulds. Kristy then moved to the University of Montreal to carry out her first postdoctoral position with Professor Jean-François Masson, developing the use of SPR for sensing in complex matrices. She joined Professor Cheng at UCR in 2016 and her research currently focusses on the use of nanoparticle enhanced SPR imaging as a multi-biomarker detection platform.
J. Scott Niezgoda
J. Scott Niezgoda received his B.S. in chemistry from St. Joseph’s University in 2010. He joined the laboratory of Sandra Rosenthal at Vanderbilt University that same year, and completed his PhD in 2015 studying quantum dot photovoltaic systems. He is currently a postdoc in Joshua Choi’s lab at The University of Virginia, where his attention has shifted to all-inorganic lead halide perovskite materials for solar cells designed for space travel. In the future, Scott plans to remain in academia as a Professor.
Anamaria Orza
Dr. Orza is a Senior Research Scientist in the Laboratory of Nanomedicine at Emory Medical School, USA. She completed her Ph.D. on the development of therapeutic nanoparticles in the Department of Chemistry, Liverpool University, UK and Babes Bolyai University, Romania. Her research is focused on developing hybrid-engineered nanomaterials for biomedical applications, such as: tissue engineering and cancer treatment/diagnosis. Creative approaches to the design of such nanomaterials come from chemistry, biotechnology, biology/medicine, and engineering. Additionally, Dr. Orza is a Director and Chief Scientist at IndagoMed. LLC, USA, a company focused on creating performance products through the use of nanotechnology.
Baichuan Sun
As Data Scientist at Molecular & Materials Modelling (MMM) Laboratory, Data61, CSIRO, Australia, Dr. Baichuan Sun’s research has been focused on innovative methodology implementation in nanoscience and nanotechnologies. From an interdisciplinary perspective of high-throughput computational simulations and big-data driven nanomaterial discoveries, Dr. Sun leads projects developing hybrid HPC/Big Data platform, realising interactive and intelligent pipelines of large-scale nanostructure generation, characterisation, parallel computation, big data ETL, analysis and mining with cutting-edge machine learning algorithms. Dr. Sun completed his Ph.D. at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, and his undergraduate studies at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), China.
Chenyu Wang
Chenyu Wang received his Bachelor of Science at Nanjing  University of Science and Technology in 2010 and his PhD from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2015 with a thesis title of “Shape-controlled synthesis of Platinum based bimetallic nanocrystals and investigation of their size, composition and structure-dependent catalytic behaviors”. Chenyu is a Postdoctoral Researcher Indiana University, working in the group of Sara Skrabalak. Hi is involved in the development of functional nanomaterials applied in advanced energy systems, engineering the surface/interface structures and customizing the overall architectures for a variety of materials to enhance their integral performances in devices. Chenyu Wang has completed several research projects pertaining to sustainable energy and heterogeneous catalysis. Combining expertise in theory and synthesis, Chenyu carries out projects pertaining to catalyst design and evaluation.
Hai Wang
Dr Hai Wang is a Post doc in the State Key Lab on Integrated Optoelectronics, JLU Region, Jilin University, China. Dr Wang obtained his B.S. degree in Physics from Jilin University in China. After that, he moved to Italian institute of technology in Italy and obtained his PhD degree in Nanoscience. With good skills in ultrafast spectroscopy and nanofabrication, his research focuses on strong light-matter interaction, such as strong coupling between surface plasmons and J-aggregates, semiconductor quantum dots and other kinds of materials.
Kai Xu
Mr. Kai Xu received his Bachelor’s degree from the School of Physics and Electronics, Shandong Normal University in 2011. He is currently a PhD candidate under the supervision of Prof. Jun He in the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST), China. His research interests focus on synthesis, assembly and characterization of two-dimensional materials and their advanced electronics and photonics.
Kangyi Zhang
Kangyi Zhang is a biomedical engineer with research interests in nanotechnology, biomaterials, tissue engineering and cancer. He received his Bachelor’s from Brown University in 2009, Master’s from Northwestern University in 2012 and PhD from University of California, Los Angeles in 2015. Hi is currently working at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (Singapore) as part of the scholarship program offered by A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research). He also enjoys making YouTube videos, skateboarding, snowboarding, writing music, playing the flute and playing soccer.
Yao Zheng
Yao Zheng received his PhD degree in 2014 from the University of Queensland (Australia). Currently he is a DECRA research fellow in University of Adelaide (Australia) working with Professor Shi Zhang Qiao. His research focuses on developing cost effective counterparts as alternatives of precious catalysts for some key electrocatalysis processes like oxygen reduction, hydrogen evolution, and CO2 reduction reactions. He is trying to develop a designing procedure of nanostructured electrocatalysts by combining the power from density functional theory computation, nanotechnology, materials spectra characterisation, and electrochemical measurement to form an “origin-design-engineering-validation” streamline.
Kai Zhu
Mr. Kai Zhu received his Bachelor degree in the College of Physics from Jilin University in 2011, China. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree under the supervision of Professor Gang Chen and Prof. Yingjin Wei in the Laboratory of Physics and Technology for Advance Batteries at Jilin University. From 2014 to 2016, he joined Prof Haoshen Zhou’s group as a visiting student at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan. His research interest is focused on new materials for electrochemical energy storage system including lithium/sodium ion batteries, lithium-air batteries and supercapacitor.
Xiaolu Zhuo
Miss Xiaolu Zhuo, currently a PhD student in Professor Jianfang Wang’s group in the Department of Physics of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, obtained her BS degree in physics in 2010 from Sun Yat-sen University, China. Her current research interest focuses on the designed and preparation of metal nanocrystals, their plasmonic properties, and their plasmon-based applications.
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