Chris Dames received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006. His B.S. and M.S. are from UC Berkeley (1998, 2001). He was a faculty member at UC Riverside from 2006-2011 before joining UC Berkeley in 2011, and he has also worked as a research engineer for Solo Energy Corp. (1998-1999). His research interests emphasize fundamental studies of heat transfer and energy conversion at the nanoscale, using both theoretical and experimental methods. Some topics of current interest include graphene, nanocrystalline materials, mean free path distributions, thermoelectrics, biological systems, and highly anisotropic and nonlinear transport including thermal rectification. His research has been recognized with a DARPA Young Faculty Award (2009) and NSF CAREER award (2011).

Dr. Ruijiao Miao

Ruijiao Miao is a postdoctoral scholar working on tunable energy storage materials and thermal switches for thermal management applications. She received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, where her doctoral research focused on tuning the charge transfer and thermoelectric properties in molecular junctions. She is co-advised by Prof. Ravi Prasher at LBNL.

Dr. Qiye Zheng

Qiye Zheng is a postdoctoral scholar working on high-throughput optical thermal metrology for the characterization of porous materials in multiscale. Before joining the lab, he received his PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where his research is focused on the energy transport and structure properties relationship in thermal functional materials for heat dissipation and thermal regulation applications. He is co-advised by Ravi Prasher at LBNL.

Spencer Alliston

Spencer Alliston received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2019, where he worked on Steam Methane Reformation at the distributed scale. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. His current research is supported by the ATP-Bio NSF Engineering Research Center, in which he focuses on characterization and phase tracking of amorphous and crystalline ice for the purpose of biological tissue preservation. He is co-advised by Ravi Prasher at LBNL.

Tristan Gilbert

Tristan received his B.Eng. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in May 2020, where his research focused on nanostructured materials for energy conversion. He has also completed several industry internships in battery R&D. He is currently pursuing his PhD at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, advised by Profs. Chris Dames and Ravi Prasher, where his research spans materials development and techno-economic modeling for thermal energy storage. Tristan is a recipient of the Chancellor's Fellowship at UC Berkeley and the Bridge Fellowship at LBNL.

Mingxin Jia

Mingxin received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with minors in Electrical Engineering and Civil Engineering from Columbia University in 2019. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley with the help of a Berkeley Graduate Fellowship. Prior to joining the group, Mingxin’s research focused on developing scalable and low-cost materials and devices for radiative cooling applications. Currently, his research focuses on developing energy-efficient water desalination technologies powered by solar energy. At UC Berkeley, he is co-advised by Professor Chris Dames and Professor Ravi Prasher.

Joseph Schaadt

Joseph Schaadt received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Villanova University in 2015, with minors in mathematics, physics, and mechatronics. Joseph is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Upon graduation from Villanova University, Joseph spent time in industry in Silicon Valley. Subsequently, Joseph was a Fulbright Research Fellow and a Swiss Government Excellence Scholar with Professor John Thome in the Heat and Mass Transfer Laboratory (LTCM) at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL). Joseph followed this with spending a year as a research assistant with Professor Kenneth Goodson in the NanoHeat Lab at Stanford University. His current research focuses on the application of nano/microfabrication techniques to study the fundamentals of phase-change heat transfer through the development of an electrowetting thermal switch. Joseph is a recipient of the Chang-Lin Tien Graduate Fellowship at UC Berkeley.

Lei Tang

Lei Tang received his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Utah in 2017 and 2018, respectively. His past research mainly focused on investigating near-field thermal radiation-mediated photonic thermal diodes via both numerical and experimental approaches. Currently, his research focuses on studying polycrystalline ceramics for high power lasing gain media.

Jason Wu

Jason Wu received his M.S. and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Connecticut in 2015 and 2016 respectively. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been selected as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program fellow. He had been focused on low dimensional materials synthesis and its thermal and electrical transport characterization before joining UC Berkeley. His current research focuses on thermal transport characterization of ferroelectric materials. In his free time, Jason enjoys baking, cooking, and traveling.