Professor Vladimir Bulović
bulovic@mit.edu | RLE Biography
Office: 13-3138
Phone: 617.253.7012

Vladimir Bulović joined the faculty of MIT in July 2000 where he is now the Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, leading the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory, co-directing the MIT-ENI Solar Frontiers Center.  As the MIT Energy Initiative council member Bulović is co-heading the Energy Education Task Force and co-directing the MIT Energy Studies Minor.  In 2008 he was named the Class of 1960 Faculy Fellow, and in 2009 he was named the Van Buren Hansford (1937) - Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow.

Bulovic received electrical engineering B.S.E. in 1991 from Princeton University, M.S. in 1993 from Columbia University and Ph.D in 1998 from Princeton University. Just prior to joining MIT, he was a Senior Scientist and Project Head of Strategic Technology Development at Universal Display Corporation (UDC). At UDC he worked on the application of organic materials to LEDs for full color flat panel displays and thin film photovoltaics for solar cell and detector applications. Prior to UDC he worked in Princeton's POEM Center as a graduate researcher (1993-1998) and research associate (1998-1999) participating in a series of projects examining the optical and electrical properties of vacuum deposited amorphous and crystalline molecular organic thin films and devices. For his M.S. degree, Prof. Bulovic worked at Columbia University's Microelectronics Sciences Laboratory (1991-1993), where he examined image-potential states and resonances on metal surfaces utilizing nonlinear two-photon photoemission spectroscopy.

At MIT his research interests include studies of physical properties of organic and organic/inorganic nanocrystal composite thin films and structures, and development of novel optoelectronic organic and hybrid nano-scale devices. His papers and patents cover the areas of organic and nanostructured light emitting diodes, lasers, photovoltaics, photodetectors, chemical sensors, and programmable memories, majority of which have been licensed and utilized by both start-up and multinational companies.

Together with ONE-Lab alum Dr. Seth Coe-Sullivan, Bawendi group alum Dr. Jonny Steckel, and Sloan school graduate Greg Moeler, in 2004 Prof. Bulović founded QD Vision, Inc. of Watertown MA which is focused on development of quantum dot optolectronics.  Together with ONE-Lab alums Dr. Conor Madigan and Dr. Jianglong (Gerry) Chen, Prof. Marty Schmidt and Dr. Valerie Leblanc, in 2007 Prof. Bulovic founded Kateeva, Inc. (formerly named TJet Technologies, Inc.) of Menlo Park CA which is focused on development of printed organic electronics.

Prof. Bulović is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers, the National Science Foundation Career Award, The Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching, Eta Kappa Nu Honor Society Award for Outstanding Teaching, and was named to Technology Review TR100 List.

Prof. Bulovic's RLE video profile at MIT TechTV | Hi-Resolution Photo of Prof. Bulovic

Gleb Akselrod
akselrod@mit.edu
Office: 13-3146
Phone: 617.252.3210

Gleb joined ONE-Lab in the Spring of 2008 as Ph.D. candidate in Physics. He earned his B.S. in Engineering Physics with honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. During his sophomore and junior years he worked as an undergraduate researcher studying laser-guided assembly of living bacterial microarrays in the lab of Professor Gregory Timp. During his senior year he switched topics and began theoretical work in quantum optics under Professor Paul Kwiat modeling the quantum state of entangled photon sources. In 2007 he received the Hertz Fellowship and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to study physics at MIT. In ONE-Lab he is currently studying the regime of strong coupling between organic materials and optical microcavities, which could lead to ultra energy efficient lasers and all-optical switches.

Alexi Arango
aarango@mit.edu
Office: 13-3157
Phone: 617.452.4778

Alexi Arango joined ONE-Lab in the summer of 2002 as a Ph.D. candidate. In 1998, he graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) with a B.S. in physics. For his undergraduate research thesis project, Alexi studied the photovoltaic process in conjugated polymer solar cells, which led him to investigate novel device structures employing a titanium dioxide anode. During the summer of 1998, he continued work on photovoltaics, employing a new conjugated polymer with enhanced hole mobility. In the subsequent year, he returned to UCSC as a research assistant, where he designed and fabricated polymer based solar cells that reached record high efficiencies for devices with a single polymer film. In the fall of 1999, he was at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, investigating the use of inorganic semiconductor nanocrystals as hole transport materials in polymer devices. Starting in 2000, Alexi spent two and a half years with E Ink Corporation, an MIT spin-off attempting to commercialize electrophoretic displays. There, he investigated the optical and electronic properties of electrophoretics, ultimately leading to the development of waveforms for grayscale addressing schemes. His waveforms are currently implemented in E Ink displays, found in most ebook readers such as the Amazon Kindle.  At MIT, Alexi is currently studying the device physics of solar cells based on inorganic semiconductor nanocrystals, organic small molecules and metal oxides.  He has implemented novel device structures that have achieved higher open-circuit voltages than previously thought possible for donor/acceptor heterojunction photovoltaics.

Maddalena Binda

mbinda@mit.edu

Office: 13-3094

Phone: 617.452.4052

Maddalena joined the group in September 2009 as a recipient of the Roberto Rocca Fellowship through the MIT-Italy program. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Electronics and Information Technology at the Politecnico of Milan, Italy. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree (2005) and a Master of Science degree (2007) in electronic engineering both from Politecnico of Milan.

Patrick Brown
prbrown@mit.edu
Office: 13-3094
Phone: 617.452.4052

Patrick Brown joined the group in September 2009 as a first-year graduate student in Physics. While earning his B.S. in Physics and Chemistry at the University of Notre Dame, Patrick investigated the use of carbon nanostructures for optimizing charge collection and transfer in dye-sensitized and quantum dot solar cells. In the summer of 2008, Patrick participated in a research internship at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO, where he studied the growth of carbon nanotubes on conductive metal substrates for supercapacitors and hydrogen storage. He returned to NREL in the summer of 2009 to investigate the use of semiconducting and metallic single-walled carbon nanotube networks for transparent electrodes in organic photovoltaics. Patrick’s current work at ONE-Lab focuses on understanding the physics of charge transport in multijunction quantum dot photovoltaics (QD PVs) and the development of novel all-inorganic QD PV architectures.

Garrett Bruer

bruer@mit.edu

Office: 13-3153

Phone: 617.258.9139

Garrett joined ONE-Lab as a research assistant and Materials Science Masters of Engineering Candidate in 2009. Garrett received a BSE in Materials Science Engineering and Systems Science Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in June of 2009. His research focuses on fabrication of optical devices that employ unique geometries and materials to improve the performance, cost, and design of solar PV systems. Garrett has and continues to conduct research in fabrication of luminescent solar concentrators using novel luminescent materials.

Tim Osedach
osedach@mit.edu
Office: 13-3157
Phone: 617.452.4778

Tim is an Applied Physics Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University working as a graduate research assistant in ONE-Lab at MIT. His work is in the area of solar cells and photodetectors that incorporate organic semiconductors and nanocrystal quantum dots. In particular, he is interested in exploring exciton dissociation at organic/nanocrystal heterointerfaces. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical and computer engineering from Rowan University (2005) and a Master of Science degree in Applied Physics from Harvard University (2007).

Corinne Packard

cpackard@mit.edu

Office: 13-3078

Phone: 617.253.6893

Corinne Packard joined the group in 2008 as a Post-Doctoral Associate to develop a process to fabricate MEMS over large areas without the use of photolithography. She initially grew interested in microsystems while interning at Sandia National Laboratories during summer breaks from the S.B. program in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at MIT. She continued on in that department to earn a Ph.D., where she developed techniques for characterizing the nanoscale mechanics of materials and applied them to study the deformation of metallic glasses. She is interested in the unique materials processing and performance challenges associated with reduced dimensions in MEMS and other microsystems.

Sarah Paydavosi
sarap@mit.edu
Office: 13-3154
Phone: 617.452.3210

Sarah Paydavosi joined ONE-Lab in 2008 as a Ph.D. candidate. Sarah received electrical engineering B.S. in 2005, M.S. in 2007 from University of Tehran. For her Master research thesis project, Sarah worked on low temperature silicon crystallization and thin-film transistors on plastic substrates. Her current research focuses on using molecules as segmented charge storage elements in floating gate flash memories.

Jill Rowehl
jillar@mit.edu
Office: 13-3150
Phone: 617.452.3181

Jill joined ONE-Lab in Spring 2007 as an undergraduate researcher studying photo-generated charge recombination at organic semiconductor interfaces with the objective of enhancing responsivity of organic heterojunction photoconductors.  She received her S.B. from MIT Course 3 in Spring 2008 and continued within ONE-Lab as a PhD candidate in Course 3.  Her current research works to develop cost-effective, power-efficient nanostructured solar cells via novel fabrication methods, materials, and device structures, with strong collaborations through MITEI.  She focuses on understanding and manipulating processes occurring at the photoactive interface in organic photovoltaics through modification of the nanostructure.

Yasuhiro Shirasaki
yshir@mit.edu
Office: 13-3154
Phone: 617.452.3210

Yasuhiro Shirasaki joined the group in September 2006 after receiving a B.S. in Electrical Science and Engineering and a B.S. in Physics from MIT.  He received a Master of Engineering in February 2008 and is currently in the Ph.D. program of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department.  His research interest is in understanding the physics of J aggregates of small organic molecules and quantum dots and applying them to novel optoelectronic devices.

Katherine Stone
kawstone@mit.edu
Office: 13-3146

Phone: 617.452.5403

Kathy Stone joined ONE-Lab in 2009 as a joint post-doctoral researcher with Vladimir Bulovic and Keith Nelson (MIT Department of Chemistry) after completing her Ph.D. in physical chemistry with Professor Nelson. During her Ph.D. work, she pioneered the use of spatiotemporal femtosecond pulse shaping for coherent multidimensional Fourier Transform electronic spectroscopy of multi-exciton dynamics in inorganic semiconductors. She is currently interested in the nonlinear optical properties of J-aggregates and how single and multi-exciton dynamics play a role in the physics of strong coupling of J-aggregate excitons to cavity-confined photons and surface plasmon polaritons. These studies will guide the fabrication of J-aggregate microcavity devices for applications in "inversionless" polariton lasing and ultrafast optical switching. Kathy is also interested in probing the transfer ofexciton coherence and population through the layers of organic thin-film devices and organic-inorganic composite materials. Kathy is also member of the Center for Excitonics at MIT.

Geoffrey Supran

gjsupran@mit.edu

Office: 13-3153

Phone: 617.452.5029

Geoffrey Supran matriculated as a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Materials Science & Engineering at MIT and joined ONE-Lab in September 2009. He obtained a First Class Honours degree (B.A.) in Natural Sciences (physics) from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, in 2009. As an undergraduate and high-school student Geoffrey was fortunate to participate in a number of optoelectronics summer research projects. In 2005, under the supervision of Professor Richard Friend at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, he investigated phase separation in polyfluorene-based electroluminescent spin-cast thin films, with particular emphasis on incorporation of random copolymers into organic LEDs. In the Alivisatos Group at UC Berkeley in 2006, he investigated morphological control in all-inorganic solar cells comprising tetrapod shaped nanocrystals. In 2008 he investigated injection and transport mechanisms of the recombination region of high-efficiency polymer tandem solar cells in the Heeger Group at UC Santa Barbara. Geoffrey’s current work focuses on understanding the photo-physics of quantum dot LEDs and applying these underlying principles to the development of novel device structures.

Vanessa Wood
vwood@mit.edu
Office: 13-3146
Phone: 617.452.5403

Vanessa joined ONE-Lab in July 2005 as a graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.  Vanessa's research focuses on developing methods for combining colloidally synthesized quantum dots (QDs) and metal oxide thin films to form air-stable, light emitting devices and using these structures to study mechanisms for electrical excitation of QDs.  Prior to starting at MIT, she received a B.S. in Applied Physics from Yale College in May 2005.

Elizabeth R. Young

eyoung@mit.edu

Office: 13-3146

Phone: 617-452-3210

Liz joined ONE-Lab in the fall of 2009 as a post-doctoral fellow. She holds a B.S. in chemistry from Haverford College and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from MIT. As a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry in Professor Daniel G. Nocera’s research group, Liz employed time-resolved laser spectroscopy (ps and ns time regimes) to study proton-coupled electron transfer in model systems. After a brief collaboration with ONE-Lab during the last year of her graduate work, Liz became interested in pursuing post-doctoral work in the group. In ONE-Lab, she will continue working with J-aggregates of cyanine dyes and other organic dyes in strongly coupled light/matter microcavity systems. Her work will also focus on integration of molecular water oxidation catalysts with photovoltaic materials towards use in an electrochemical photoanode.

http://web.mit.edu/eyoung/www/index/

Ni Zhao
nzhao@mit.edu
Office: 13-3153
Phone: 617.258.9139

Ni Zhao joined the group in 2008 as a Post-Doctoral Associate. Her current work focuses on developing novel hybrid solar cell structures which incorporate colloidal quantum dots with organic and inorganic materials, and using these structures to study electronic processes in solar cells.  Prior to starting at MIT, she received a PhD in Physics from University of Cambridge in 2008.