Alumni

Yuan TIAN

Project: Printed inorganic thermoelectric generators (2019-2024, FWO fellowship)

Currently: Pattern attorney at IP Hills (Belgium)

Undergrad/Master: Undergrad/Master: Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University (China) / Erasmus Mundus Master of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, KU Leuven (Belgium) & Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden)

PhDs

Postdocs

Daiman Zhu

Project: Printed thermoelectric generators (2020 - 2022, FWO fellowship)

Current position: Faculty at North China Electric Power University (NCEPU), Beijing

Email: Linkedin; Researchgate

PhD/Postdoc: Material Science and Engineering

(supervised by Prof. Changrong Li), University of Science and Technology Beijing (China)/Department of Materials Engineering, KU Leuven (Belgium)

Altynay

Vijitha Ignatious

Email: Who is Who, LinkedIn, Google Scholar

PhD/Postdoc: PhD in Physics, CSIR- National Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences and Technology (India) / Department of Materials Engineering, KU Leuven (Belgium)

Project: Organic Thermoelectrics

Vijitha obtained her doctoral degree in Physics in "Organic-based hybrid materials for thermoelectric applications" from India on October 2022. Her doctoral research focused on preparing a class of new-generation thermoelectric materials with the unique benefits of easy processing, printable, lightweight, intrinsically highly flexible, affordable, and low toxic. She developed hybrid materials of conjugated polymers and carbon nanotubes followed by device/module fabrication, focusing on thermoelectric applications for energy harvesting. She moved to Belgium in April 2023 to work as a post-doctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Francisco Molina-Lopez at KU Leuven.

Alysson Ferreira Morais

Email: Who is Who, Google Scholar

PhD/Postdoc: PhD in Physics, University of São Paulo (Brazil) / Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis, KU Leuven (Belgium)

Project: A thermoelectric generator for low-grade heat to electricity/hydrogen conversion (H2E)

Alysson was born in Brazil in 1990. He graduated in Physics in 2012 at the University of Campinas (Brazil) and obtained his master’s (2014) and his doctorate’s (2018) degree in Physics at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). His doctorate studies focused on the synthesis, structural and spectroscopic characterization of hierarchical porous solid-state materials. His main goal was the achievement of improved surface and bulk properties for the investigated materials. During his PhD, he was granted the Santander Mobility fellowship and visited KU Leuven as a visiting scholar. After a period as interim professor and lecturer at the University of São Paulo (aug-dec 2018), he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in São Paulo with a fellowship granted by FAPESP to investigate the applications of porous materials as molecular markers. He moved to Belgium in 2021 to work as post-doctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Johan Martens at KU Leuven. In 2022 he was granted the prestigious MSCA-IF grant from the European Commission and since September 2022 he works as a Marie Curie fellow in the group of Prof. Johan Martens and in collaboration with Prof. Francisco Molina-Lopez at KU Leuven, exploring the thermoelectric properties of recently discovered porous semiconductor materials. His final aim is to develop new cost-efficient thermoelectric generators for waste heat to electricity/hydrogen conversion.