Current

Current potdocs

Michael Ng

PhD/Postdoc: PhD in Chemistry, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology / Department of Materials Engineering, KU Leuven.

Project: Printed Organic Thermoelectric Generators

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-ng-b13115145/

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sjbJScoAAAAJ&hl=en

Michael Ng was born and raised in New Zealand. He completed his Bachelors in Chemistry and Physics at Victoria University of Wellington in 2014, followed by a Masters in Physics in 2017. He then completed his PhD in Chemistry in 2021 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in the Halpert Group. Afterward, he briefly returned to New Zealand, where he worked in the Materials Team at GNS Science in 2022. His previous areas of research have been focused on colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals, perovskite materials, LEDs, solar cells, optoelectronic devices, photothermal materials, and renewable energy materials.

Altynay Kaidarova

Email: Who is Who, LinkedIn, Google Scholar

PhD/Postdoc: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Project: Printed organic thermoelectric generators

Altynay Kaidarovaa holds a Ph.D. (2021) from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. She earned her M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from KAUST in 2017 and a degree (Hons.) in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Liverpool University, U.K., in 2014. In recognition of her academic achievements, she was awarded the Bolashak International Scholarship by the President of Kazakhstan in 2010. Dr. Kaidarova pursued a foundation program at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, in 2011.
She demonstrated leadership and expertise in driving collaborative industrial projects and managing multidisciplinary engineering teams. She has co-supervised both master's and bachelor's theses and actively participated in the preparation of proposals, resource management, and execution of projects.
An author of 15 scientific journals, including 10 first author, 2 in Nature Partner Journals Flexible Electronics, and 1 in Nature Biotechnology (Impact 68.16), and presented the findings at various international conferences and reputable news and media channels (Nature, Advanced Science News, National Geographic, Arab News, etc)
She is interested in the design, fabrication, and characterization of printed, organic/inorganic, low-cost electronics, sensors and actuators based on additive manufacturing. Aspired to develop new materials and processes for harvesting and storing energy from large-area and curved surfaces, as well as to apply the results of multidisciplinary research to new applications in autonomous and wearable systems for biomedicine and the Internet of Marine Life.

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.

Daiman

Alumni

Daiman Zhu

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)

Project: Printed thermoelectric generators (Sept 2020 - Aug 2022)

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

Daiman obtained her PhD in “Thermodynamic study on some subsystems of the skutterudite thermoelectric materials (Va, Ce, Yb) (Co, Fe, Ni)4 (Sb, Ge)12” in China.

Between May 2017 and July 2018, she worked as a technical engineer for the development of materials with high magnetic properties in Beijing General Research Institute of Mining &Metallurgy) Technology Group in China.

From December 2018 till October 2020, she joined the solidification and microstructure and simulation group (supervised by Prof. Dr. Nele Moelans), together with the additive manufacturing group (supervised by Prof. Dr. Kim Vanmeensel) at KU Leuven in Belgium as a postdoctoral researcher. She was responsible for CALPHAD calculations and additive manufacturing of advanced Al/Ti alloys.

In September 2020, she was awarded a Senior Postdoc Researcher FWO Fellowship to investigate at KU Leuven the thermodynamics of 3D laser-printed thermoelectrics based on Bi-Sb-Te-Se quaternary systems, under the supervision of Prof. Francisco Molina-Lopez, Prof. Nele Moelans, and Prof. Kim Vanmeensel. Simultaneously, she is a guest researcher in the Institute for Applied Materials - Applied Materials Physics (IAM-AWP) at KIT in Germany, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hans Jürgen Seifert.