Meet the team

PI: Dr. Svetlana V. Boriskina

PhD in Physics & Mathematics, Kharkiv National University, Ukraine

Google Scholar profile

MEMBERS:
Dr. Volodymyr (Vlad) Korolovych (Research Scientist)

Volodymyr is working on fabrication and characterization of novel polymer fibers and textiles as well as on the deposition and testing of thin-film semiconductor materials for flexoelectric energy harvesting. He holds a PhD in Thermophysics and Molecular Physics from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and had post-doctoral training at Georgia Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

Dr. Vivian Santamaria-Garcia (Post-Doctoral Fellow)

Vivian is interested in the theoretical modeling of electron transport and electron transfer in molecular junctions and ultra-scaled materials based on organic, metallic, metal oxides and other semiconductor materials for sensing and energy harvesting applications. Her current research at MIT focuses on theoretical studies on the relationship between charge transport and mechanical strain of chalcogenide-derived materials to understand and predict electromechanical properties like flexoelectricity and piezoelectricity. She holds a Ph.D. in Nanotechnology from Tecnologico de Monterrey, in collaboration with Penn State University.

Simo Pajovic (Graduate Student)

Simo graduated from the University of Toronto in 2019 with a B.ASc. in Mechanical Engineering and is currently a PhD candidate co-advised by Dr. Svetlana Boriskina and Prof. Marin Soljačić. His research focuses on light-matter interactions and how we can use novel materials to control them in mechanical engineering applications ranging from energy to medicine. Simo is a recipient of an MIT Presidential fellowship and an NSF graduate research fellowship.

Morgan Blevins (Graduate Student)

Morgan graduated from Harvey Mudd College in 2019 with a B.S. in Engineering and is currently a PhD candidate at MIT supported by the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory​. Her masters work at MIT focused on optical ​and photonic metamaterial devices for sensing in marine environments as well as the detection of viruses. Her current research focuses on light-matter interaction and electron transport in quantum materials, with applications in energy harvesting and photodetection via the photogalvanic effect, as well as non-reciprocal heat transfer. She is also a MIT Communication Lab fellow.

Duo Xu (Graduate Student)

Duo received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California San Diego in 2021 and is currently an S.M student & Graduate Research Assistant at MIT. His research at MIT focuses on the fabrication and optimization of multifunctional composite polyethylene-based materials for radiation shielding.

Buxuan Li (Graduate Student)

Buxuan is interested in understanding energy transport in amorphous materials, especially polymers, using computational methods including molecular dynamics and first principle calculations. He is also interested in engineering polymers to have unconventional thermal properties and experimentally characterizes thermal conductivity of materials.

Ikra Shuvo (Graduate Student)

Ikra is currently pursuing a PhD at MIT, co-supervised by Dr. Svetlana Boriskina and Dr. Joseph Paradiso. During his MSc at MIT, he specialized in microfabricating novel high-frequency (3-15 MHz) ultrasonic transducer arrays with wearable characteristics for imaging breast cancer, wireless energy transfer, and other biomedical applications. Ikra graduated from BUTEX with a BSc in Textile Engineering, specializing in Chemical Wet Processing. During his MS in Biosystems Engineering at the University of Manitoba and his MS in Textiles at the University of Alberta, he received UMGF fellowship and multi-year MITACS Canada fellowship.

Hannah Gold (Graduate Student)

Hannah graduated from Boston University in 2022 with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a concentration in nanotechnology. She worked on CMOS technology for hardware Trojan detection in her undergraduate time and is experienced in digital logic design. During the course of her PhD she hopes to work on parameter optimizations for photonic device design and currently is working on maximizing nonreciprocal effects in planar structures. Hannah is a UCEM scholar and MIT Presidential fellow.

Amy Huynh (Graduate Student)

Amy graduated from UC Irvine with Bachelor’s degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering and worked full-time as an Operations Systems Engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the mission operations team for the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. At MIT, Amy is pursuing a dual Master’s in the Technology and Policy Program and AeroAstro, working on engineering spacesuit materials and sustainable textiles. Amy is an NSF graduate research program fellow.

 
Abhishek Mukherjee (Graduate Student)

Abhishek graduated from Birla Institute of Technology and Science with a Bachelor's degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering. His research interests lie in developing novel nanophotonic and semiconductor-based devices that can find applications in on-chip optoelectronics and photonic integrated circuits. Abhishek's work at MIT focuses on strain-engineering of semiconductor materials for applications in photodetection, energy transfer, and light emission.

Lyu You (Visiting Graduate Student)

You Lyu is a visiting graduate student from Southern University of Science and Technology in China. His research at MIT focuses on characterizing and fundamental understanding polymer properties for enhancement of elasto/twistocaloric effects in synthetic fibers and yarns.

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ALUMNI:  
Chanik Kang (Visiting Graduate Student)

Chanik was a visiting student from Soongsil University in South Korea, whose work at MIT was supported by the High-Potential Individual Global Training Program. He worked on computation-driven metasurface design using inverse design, deep learning, and adjoint method.

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Junyoung Lee (Visiting Graduate Student)

Junyoung was a visiting student from Soongsil University in Korea, whose work at MIT was supported by the High-Potential Invidivual Global Training Program. Junyoung was applying photonic inverse design techniques to engineer and optimize photonic devices for biosensing, light focusing, and color sorting (such as e.g., CMOS image sensors).

 
Xianglin Ji (Undergraduate Student)

Xianglin was a special student (senior) from Southern University of Science and Technology, who was supported by MIT-SUSTech Center. His work in the group focused on using Fraunhofer diffraction for direct measurements of the axial Poisson's ratio of microfibers.

Boyu (Kevin) Duan (Undergraduate Student)

Boyu was a special student (senior) from Southern University of Science and Technology, who was supported by MIT-SUSTech Center. His interests spanned fluid mechanics, heat transfer, and nanomaterials. His research at MIT mainly focused on the Mechanics analysis of microcantilevers during snap-in process. Before coming to Boston, he studied at UC Berkeley as an exchange student.

Alice Vranka (Undergraduate Student)

Alice is an andergraduate student planning to major in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Engineering Management. Her work in the group focused on fabricating and engineering complex polymer yarns with a focus on maximizing chemical and mechanical recyclability.

Lauryn Kortman (Undergraduate Student)

Lauryn is an undergraduate student majoring in Materials Science and Engineering. She enjoys working with polymer-based materials and composites by manipulating formulations and production processes to obtain optimal material performance.

Munseong Bae (Visiting Student)

Munseong was a visiting student from Soongsil University in Korea, whose work at MIT was supported by the High-Potential Invidivual Global Training Program. Junjeon worked on photonic inverse design techniques and their applications to study radiative energy transport, light focusing, and biosensing.

Leslie Yan (Undergraduate Student)

Motivated by increasing sustainability of the textile and sports industries, Leslie has been working on a senior thesis focused on the development and testing of the concept of a monomaterial circular sneaker, which can be continuously recycled into a new generation of footwear.

Sehar Lohawala (Undergraduate Student)

Sehar did a UROP project in the group in 2022. She worked on a project that involved testing the thermal and elastocaloric properties of polyethylene yarns by applying various mechanical deformations to it, such as twisting and stretching.

Remington (Remi) Sandell (Undergraduate Student)

Remi did a UROP project in the group in 2022 and is majoring in mechanical engineering. She is interested in sustainability challenges and was working on a project involving testing flexoelectric solar cells for solar and thermal radiative energy generation.

Yoichiro Tsurimaki (Graduate Student)

Yoichiro received his B.E. and M.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Tohoku University in 2012 and 2015, respectively and earned an M.E. in Energy and Environmental Engineering from INSA de Lyon in 2014. His work at MIT focused on studying fundamentals of heat transfer mechanisms and nanoscale forces. Current Position: Post-doctoral associate, Stanford University

Tess Engst-Mansilla (Undergraduate Student)

Tess worked on market research and commercialization of the SVETEX technology and as a teaching assistant in the MIT-FIT 2020-2021 Advanced Fabrics Workshop. Her work also involved studying surface wettability properties of PE fibers of different crystallinity and was funded by an MIT Sandbox program intership. 

Jungwoo Shin (Post-doctoral Associate)

Jungwoo received his B.S. in Material Science and Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology, and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research at MIT focused on ultrafast spectroscopy and development of high-conductivity polymers. Current Position: Google

Dr. Haejun Chung (Postdoctorate Associate)

Haejun works in the areas of inverse design of nanophotonic devices, developing a fast inverse design algorithm and novel metasurfaces. He graduated with magna cum laude B. S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology in 2010, then obtained M. S. (2013) and Ph. D. (2017) degrees both from Purdue University, and held a post-doctoral position at Yale University prior to working at MIT in 2020-2021. Current Position: Assistant Professor, Hanyang University, Korea

Dr. Marcelo Lozano (Postdoctorate Fellow)

Marcelo received his Ph.D. degree from the Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico). His work at MIT focused on the development of highly-conductive plastics and wearable multi-functional fibers/textiles for passive thermoregulation. Current Position: Professor, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico

Matteo Albergihini (Visiting Graduate Student)
Matteo Alberghini received his M.Sc. in mechanical engineering from Politecnico di Torino in 2017, where he also started his Ph.D. in Energetics in 2018. While working at MIT as a visiting student, he conducted experimental investigations and numerical modelling of fluid flow through porous media for water treatment and personal thermal management.
Current position: PhD Student, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
 
Aline Vargas (Undergraduate Student)

As an UG student assistant, Aline was working on market research and commercialization of SVETEX technology centered on the development and fabrication of sustainable polyethtylene-based fibers & textiles.

Yi Huang (Graduate Student)
Yi graduated from University of California, Los Angeles in 2012 with a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering and in Applied Math. Her work at MIT focused on the design and characterization of new fibers and textiles and on the development of novel solar and thermal energy harvesting platforms.
 
Dr. Seongdon (David) Hong (Visiting Fellow)

David joined our group in 2017-2018 to work on the development of structurally-colored high-conductivity plastic films and fibers. His work in MIT also focused on studying water transport through plastic films and woven textiles. Current Affiliation: Defense Agency for Technology and Quality, Seoul, South Korea

Dr. Hadi Zandavi (Postdoctoral Fellow)

Hadi received his M.S. degree from the Sharif University of Technology and B.S. degree from Shiraz University both in Mechanical Engineering. His research at MIT in 2016-2017 focused on the development and characterization of materials for solar energy harvesting, water treatment, and passive thermoregulation. Current Affiliation: Intel

 

Francesco Signorato (Visiting Student)
Francesco received is B.S degree in Mechanical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino in 2017. His work at MIT focused on the optimization of both radiative and evaporative cooling for personal thermal management.
Current position: PhD Student, Cambridge University, UK
 
Alejandra Navarro (Undergraduate Student)

Alejandra's undergraduate thesis addressed the sustainability challenges of the textile and fashion industries and strategies to overcome them.

 

 

Milo Hooper (Undergraduate Student)

Milo has worked on understanding and developing novel photonic biosensing platforms based on the probe cleavage detection mechanism and the use of CRISPR-cas complexes to achieve biological and photonic amplification of molecular detection.

 

 

Academic Collaborators:
 

Dr. Anna Michel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, MA, United States

Prof. Shanhui Fan, Stanford University, CA, United States

Prof. Owen Miller, Yale University, CT, United States

Prof. Marin Soljacic, MIT, MA, United States

Profs. Pramod Reddy, Edgar Mayhofer & Stephen Forrest, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI, United States

Profs. Vladimir Shalaev & Alexandra Boltasseva, Purdue University, IN, United States

Prof. Guihua Yu, The University of Texas at Austin, TX, United States

Prof. Julia Greer, Caltech, CA, United States

Profs. Ronald Warzoha & Brian DonovanUS Naval Academy, MD, United States

Prof. Ke DuRochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, United States

Prof. Daeyeon LeeUniverisity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Dr. Richard M. Osgood III, Dr. Natalie Pomerantz & Dr. Molly RichardsUS Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, Natick, MA, United States

Dr. Mark Polking, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA, USA

Prof. Carmel Rotschild, Technion, Israel

Prof. Selcuk YerciMiddle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

Dr. Bruno Lorenzi, Univ. of Milano Bicocca, Milano, Italy

Prof. Pietro Asinari & Dr. Matteo Fasano, Politecnico Di Torino, Torino, Italy

Dr. Marisol Martin Gonzalez, IMN-Instituto de Micro y Nanotecnología, Madrid, Spain

Prof. Andrey Miroshnichenko, Prof. Evgeny Morozov & Dr. Haroldo HattoriUniversity of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia

Dr. Swathi Iyer G.R. & Dr. F. Keith Perkins, US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC, USA

 

 

Industrial Partners

 

New Balance (USA)

Under Armor (USA)

Dow Chemical Company (USA)

Braskem (Brasil)

SiPhox, Inc (USA)

Seoyon E-Hwa (Korea)

Cosmic Shielding Corporation (USA)

Neramco, Ldt (USA)

TEK Holding, Inc (USA)

QED Labs (USA)

LaunchBay, LLC (USA)

Shingora Textiles (India)