Graduate Students
Students working on EPSCoR grant:
Karin Bichler
Student of Gerald Schneider
Karin joined the PhD program in Physics at Louisiana State University in spring 2017 and studies the structure of polymers in solution. Ms. Bichler has conducted small angle neutron scattering experiments at NIST (Gaithersburg, MD) and ANSTO (Sydney, Australia) as well as NMR measurements in Darmstadt (Germany).
Ramakanta Chapai
Student of Rongying Jin
Rama is a PhD student in Physics at Louisiana State University. He is assisting Dr. Jin with hard matter experiments and has conducted experiments at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, FL.
Natalia da Silva Moura
Student of James Dorman
Natalia is a PhD student in Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University. Her research involves synthesizing and functionalizing iron oxide nanoparticles in spherical, cubic, and hexagonal shape. She has analyzed catalytic properties under induction heating over different time frames, ranging from 5 to 50 minutes, as well as catalytic properties under conventional thermal heating. Natalia visited ORNL for neutron scattering measurements and presented and received a research award at the American Chemical Society Spring 2018 meeting.
Judith De Mel
Student of Gerald Schneider
Judith is pursuing a PhD in Chemistry at Louisiana State University under the guidance of Dr. Gerald Schneider. Her research interests are materials and macromolecular chemistry.
Pu Du
Student of Revati Kumar
Pu Du is a chemistry PhD student at Louisiana State University. His research focus is the computational study of novel polymer systems, specifically polypeptoids. Charged polypeptoids are synthetic pseudopeptides, similar to polypeptides, but lacking sterogenic centers. They show great potential in biomedical applications such as drug delivery. Pu uses computational tools to investigate the effect of charge-charge interactions on the structure and dynamics of polyelectrolytes. This involves both atomistic and coarse-grained simulations to study the polymer chain, micelle formation as well as aggregation in aqueous solutions.
Stefan Huber
Student of Gerald Schneider
Stefan is a PhD candidate in Physics at Louisiana State University. He is assisting Dr. Schneider with setting up the soft matter experiment laboratory and conducting neutron spin echo experiments.
In Chul Hwang
Student of Steve Rick
Naeyma Islam
Student of Steve Rick
Bruno Jakobi
Student of Gerald Schneider
Bruno is a PhD candidate in Chemistry at Louisiana State University. He is assisting Dr. Schneider with the soft matter experiment laboratory and conducts small angle neutron scattering experiments at NIST (Gaithersburg, MD) and ANSTO (Sydney, Australia).
Peter Kei
Student of Evgueni Nesterov
B.S. Chemistry, Bridgewater State University
Peter develops new synthetic approaches for the preparation of fluorescent organic
core-shell nanoparticles and works to expand our understanding of energy transfer
in these types of systems. These polymer dots contain a central fluorescent near-infrared
core covalently bound to a conjugated polymer shell and show strong intra-particle
excitation energy transfer. Characterization of these hierarchically built systems
by means of neutron scattering will afford information about how structural organization
is affected by the preparation conditions and its influence on the photophysical properties
of these particles, while providing valuable information about energy transfer that
can help develop better functioning optoelectronic materials.
Yingzhen Ma
Student of Bhuvnesh Bharti
Yingzhen is a PhD student in Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University. He is currently working with Dr. Bharti on soft matter self-assembly in hard matter confinement.
Madalynn Marshall
Student of Weiwei Xie
Madalynn is pursuing a PhD in Chemistry at Louisiana State University. She works with Professor Xie on tuning chemical pressure to synthesize new phases.
Ly Ngo
Student of Gerald Schneider
Ly is a PhD student in the Department of
Chemistry at Louisiana State University. Ly works with Professor Schneider on the
synthesis of liposomes.
Marzhana Omarova
Student of Vijay John
Marzhana is a student of Dr. Vijay John and is pursuing a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Tulane University. She is researching soft matter synthesis and neutron scattering.
Rasangi Perera
Student of Gerald Schneider
Rasangi is pursuing a PhD in Chemistry at Louisiana State University. Ms. Perera researches the structure and dynamics of polymers in solution.
Garrett Sternhagen
Student of Donghui Zhang
Garrett is a PhD student in Chemistry at Louisiana State University. He works on the investigation of the effect of charge-charge interaction in the micellar structure and dynamics using the sequence-defined peptoid amphiphile model (Direct 2). Garrett has been working on the synthesis of sequence-defined peptoid amphiphiles and their polymeric analogs and characterizing their solution morphologies by TEM and DLS. He will also travel to SNS to conduct neutron scattering experiments on these micelle solutions.
Kevin Igor Mkam Tsengam
Student of Vijay John
Christopher Van Leeuwen
Student of Gerald Schneider
Christopher is a PhD student in the Chemistry Department at Louisiana State University. He is assisting Dr. Schneider with the soft matter experiment laboratory.
Chun-Han Wang
Student of Evgueni Nesterov
Tianyi Yu
Student of Donghui Zhang
Undergraduate Students
Claire Boudreaux
Student of James Dorman
Claire Boudreaux is pursuing a degree in chemical engineering at Louisiana State University.
Joshua Kearney
Student of Steve Rick
Joshua Kearney is pursuing a degree in chemistry at the University of New Orleans.
Paul Koenig
Student of Evgueni Nesterov
Paul Koenig is a 4th year undergraduate student, pursuing a degree in chemistry. Working
with PhD candidate Carlos Chavez, Paul is responsible for the collection of solvatochromic
and temperature-dependent spectroscopic data for a series of environmentally-responsive
fluorescent semi-conducting polymers. Neutron scattering experiments were used to
study the morphologies of these polymers in thin films.
Joseph Mai
Student of Evgueni Nesterov
Joseph Mai is pursuing a degree in chemistry at Louisiana State University.
YeRim Noh
Student of Gerald Schneider
YeRim is pursuing a degree in chemistry at Louisiana State University.
Hunter Simonson
Student of James Dorman
Hunter is pursuing a degree in chemical engineering at Louisiana State University.
Former Undergraduate Students
Samantha Adams
Student of Vijay John
Samantha received a Bachelor’s in chemical engineering from Tulane University in 2017. Her research focuses on preparation of magnetically functionalized liposomes.
Matthew Binns
Student of Gerald Schneider
Jessica Hebert
Student of John DiTusa
Jessica received a bachelor of science in physics at Louisiana State University. Her research involves synthesis and characterization of ScFeGe, a non-centrosymmetric antiferromagnet, as well as neutron diffraction of polycrystalline samples.
Joshua Tully
Student of Yuri Lvov
Joshua Tully studies bio and nano-technology under Yuri Lvov at Louisiana Tech. A native of Bossier City, Joshua has traveled the world with his military family and has lived in seven different states and in Germany. His hobby is computer programming. He will graduate in May 2016 and plans on finding a job that will let him pursue his Master’s degree.