Principal Investigator

Chris Dames

cdames@berkeley.edu     Faculty Listing
CV (2018)

Chris Dames’ research focuses on fundamental studies of thermal transport at the nanoscale and other challenging regimes. He earned his PhD from MIT in 2006 under Gang Chen, following a BS and MS (under Arun Majumdar) from UC Berkeley. He was previously an Assistant Professor at UC Riverside before joining UC Berkeley in 2011, and since 2013 he has also held a joint appointment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in the Materials Science Division. PhD alumni from his research group have moved on to positions in academia, industry, and national labs. Prof. Dames’ recognitions include an NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, Viskanta Fellowship and heat transfer lectureship at Purdue University, and selection to the Faculty Leadership Academy at UC Berkeley. He has been serving as Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley since July 2021.

Ph.D. Students

Sarah Millen

smillen@berkeley.edu

Sarah Millen received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.S. in Applied Physics from UC Irvine in 2024. During research internships with Northrop Grumman, Sarah worked on thermal models for low temperature superconducting electronics; this research focused on near-field heat transfer and phonon transport through multilayer structures. Currently, Sarah works on nanothermometry methods using SEM, exploring the temperature dependance of electron-matter interactions. She is supported by UC Berkeley's Mentored Research Award.

Yun Chi Yang

zoeyunchi_yang@berkeley.edu

Yun Chi, also going by Zoe, joined UC Berkeley as a PhD student in 2023. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University in 2023. At Purdue, she worked on modeling air water harvesting least work advised by Prof. Warsinger, and boiling with special surface treatment co-advised by Prof. Marconnet and Prof. Weibel. Currently, she is working on the thermal switch and phase change material with the goal to improve energy storage system of buildings. She is co-advised by the Thermal Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

Sarah Chen

sarahmc777@berkeley.edu

Sarah Chen received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2022. As an undergrad, she worked on refrigeration models and machine learning models for condensation of binary mixtures at the Sustainable Thermal Systems Lab. Her work as a Ph.D. student is supported by a UC Berkeley Graduate Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She is co-advised by the Thermal Energy Group at Berkeley Lab.

Ashwath Bhat

ashwathbhat@berkeley.edu

Ashwath Bhat received his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 2021. At IIT Madras, he was part of the Energy & Emissions Lab, advised by Prof. Satya Seshadri, and in 2020 he interned in the Indoor Environment Group at LBNL where he worked with Dr. Spencer Dutton and Dr. Dre Helmns. His research is supported by the CHARM center at UC Berkeley.

Visiting Scholars (Past and Present)

• Prof. Jae Hun Seol (2022-2023), visiting professor from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea
• Chenhan Liu (2016-2018), visiting Ph.D. student from Southeast University, China
• Dr. Jian Li (2016), visiting scholar from Southeast University, China
• Prof. Ohmyoung Kwon (2016-2017), visiting professor from Korea University, Korea
• Prof. Tomohide Yabuki (2015), on sabbatical from Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan
• Chi Yan (Edwin) Tso (2015), visiting Ph.D. student & Fulbright Scholar, from Hong Kong UST
• Dr. Cheng-Wei Tu (2015), visiting scholar from ITRI, Taiwan
• Takuma Hori (2014), visiting scholar from the University of Tokyo. Now at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
• Bastian Waag (2013), visiting M.S. student from Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
• Professor Yasuhiro Hasegawa (2011-2012), visiting professor from Saitama University, Japan
• Zhiyong Wei (2010-2012), visiting Ph.D. student from Southeast University

Alumni

• Professor Qianru Jia (Postdoc. 2025; Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Arlington)
• Dr. Spencer Alliston (Ph.D. 2025; postdoc. at Columbia University)
• Dr. Lei Tang (Ph.D. 2024; postdoc. at UC Berkeley)
• Dr. Mingxin Jia (Ph.D. 2024)
• Professor Ruijiao Miao (Postdoc. 2023; next position Assistant Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
• Dr. Jason Wu (Ph.D. 2022; next position Senior Process Development Scientist at Stealth Mode Startup)
• Professor Qiye Zheng (Postdoc. 2022; next position Assistant Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
• Tristan Gilbert (PhD student 2020 - 2021, co-advised with Prof. Ravi Prasher; next position PhD student at Stanford University)
• Joseph Schaadt (MS 2021, co-advised with Prof. Ravi Prasher; next position PhD student at Stanford University)
• Dr. Hyungmook Kang (Ph.D. 2020 co-advised with J.J.Urban; next position Senior Research Scientist at Korea Institute of Science and Technology(KIST))
• Dr. Josh Wilbur (Ph.D. 2020; next position Lecturer at Arizona State University)
• Dr. Pengyu Yuan (Postdoc. 2020; next position Senior Process Development Engineer at TE Connectivity)
• Professor Menglong Hao (Postdoc. 2019; next position Professor at Southeast University in China)
• Professor Andrea Pickel (Ph.D. 2019; next position Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester)
• Dr. Wyatt Hodges (Ph.D. 2019; next position postdoctoral researcher at Sandia National Lab)
• Professor Geoff Wehmeyer (Ph.D. 2018; next position Assistant Professor at Rice University)
• Dr. Vivek Mishra (Ph.D. 2017; next position at Intel)
• Daniel Hsieh (M.S. 2016; next position Ph.D. student at UIUC)
• Dr. Sean Lubner (Ph.D. 2016; next position postdoctoral researcher with Ravi Prasher at LBNL ETA)
• Dr. Imran Khan (Ph.D. 2016; next position postdoctoral researcher with Ravi Prasher at LBNL ETA)
• Dr. Christian Monachon (Postdoc 2016; next position at Attolight)
• Mitch Westwood (M.S. 2015: thesis; next position at Spark Thermionics)
• Xiaodong Zhao (M.S. 2015: thesis)
• Jake Kilbane (M.S. 2015; next position at Sandia National Lab)
• Professor Peter (Fan) Yang (Ph.D. 2014; next position postdoctoral researcher at LBNL MSD)
• Professor Zhen Chen (Ph.D. 2014; next position postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University)
• Professor Shannon Yee (Ph.D. 2013 co-advised with A. Majumdar and R. Segalman; next position Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech)
• Dr. Jeffrey Crosby (Ph.D. 2013 co-advised with C. Koshland; last known position at Picoyune LLC)
• Dr. Zhaojie Wang (Ph.D. 2012)
• Dr. Wan Young Jang (Postdoc 2012)
• Anthony Fong (M.S. 2012 co-advised with J. Garay; next position Ph.D. student at UC Riverside)
• Corey Hardin (M.S. 2011 co-advised with J. Garay; next position Ph.D. student at UC Riverside)
• John Miller (M.S. 2009; last known position at Astronics Test Systems)