Faculty

Kavli Institute at Cornell (KIC) Executive Committee

David A. Muller, Co-Director

David A. Muller, Applied and Engineering Physics

David A. Muller is a Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics. His research interests include the development of atomic-resolution and three-dimensional electron imaging techniques, and their use in the discovery and control of new materials and nanostructures. His awards include the Burton medal of the Microscopy Society of America; a TR-100 award from Tech Review magazine; and Nature Materials selected his study of interfaces as one of the top ten papers of 2006.

Research group

Email: dm24@cornell.edu

Dan Ralph, Co-Director

Dan Ralph, Physics

Dan Ralph is Horace White Professor of Physics and current Chair of the Department of Physics. His research interests include: new nanofabrication techniques, electronic properties on molecular length scales, high-speed dynamics in magnetic devices, correlated-electron states in magnets and superconductors, and quantum properties of defects and impurities. He has been awarded Sloan and Packard Fellowships, the William L. McMillan Award, the Research Corporation Research Innovation Award, and the ONR Young Investigators Award.

Research group

Email: dcr14@cornell.edu

Debanjan Chowdhury, Member

Debanjan Chowdhury, Physics

Debanjan Chowdhury is Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics. His research is focused primarily on the study of strongly correlated quantum matter, using techniques from quantum field theory and quantum information. He was a Moore fellow, supported by the EPiQS initiative of the Gordon and Betty Moore foundation, in the Physics department at MIT until June 2019.

Research group

Email: debanjanchowdhury@cornell.edu

Brett Fors, Member

Brett Fors, Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Brett Fors is Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. His research focuses on the development of new synthetic methods and catalyst systems to control polymer architecture, composition, and function.

Research group

Email: brettfors@cornell.edu

Matthew J. Paszek, Member

Matthew Paszek, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Matthew Paszek is Associate Professor in the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He began his scientific career as an undergraduate in the School of Chemical Engineering at Cornell University. Upon receiving his B.S. from Cornell, he pursued a Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Professors Daniel Hammer and Valerie Weaver, where he conducted experimental and theoretical work that identified increased tissue stiffness and enhanced tumor cell contractility as key driving forces of cancer progression. He then moved to the University of California, San Francisco under the mentorship of Valerie Weaver, where he began his work in glycobiology and developed Scanning Angle Interference Microscopy, a powerful tool for imaging live cells at the nanoscale. In 2013, Matthew returned to Cornell University as a Kavli Fellow under the mentorship of Professor’s Abraham Stroock and Claudia Fischbach, and worked on the development of high speed, custom optoelectronics for nanoscale cellular imaging. In the Spring of 2014, Matthew joined the Cornell faculty as an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His current researches focuses on how chemistry and mechanics are coupled in living systems.

Research group

Email: paszek@cornell.edu

Grace Xing, Member

Huili (Grace) Xing, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Huili (Grace) Xing is the William L. Quackenbush Professor of Engineering and Associate Dean on Research and Graduate Studies. Her research focus can be loosely grouped into three areas: GaN electronics and optoelectronics, steep transistors, and 2D crystals. The seminconductors she works with include GaN, conventional III-Vs, graphene and other 2D crystals. Some of Xing’s honors and awards include the Young Scientist award (2014), the CAREER award (2009) and the Young Investigator Program Award (2008).

Research group

Email: grace.xing@cornell.edu

Christopher Ober, Ex-Officio as Director of the CNF

Christopher Ober, CNF Director

Christopher Ober is the Francis Bard Professor of Materials Engineering, and the Lester B. Knight Director of the Cornell NanoScale Facility. Chris received his B.Sc. in Honours Chemistry (Co-op) from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada in 1978 and his Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) in 1982. From 1982 until 1986 he was a senior member of the research staff at the Xerox Research Centre of Canada where he worked on marking materials. Ober joined Cornell University in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 1986. A Fellow of the ACS, APS and AAAS, his awards include the 2013 SPSJ International Award, 2009 Gutenberg Research Award from the University of Mainz, the 1st Annual FLEXI Award in the Education Category (for flexible electronics) awarded in 2009, a Humboldt Research Prize in 2007 and the 2006 ACS Award in Applied Polymer Science. In 2014 he was a JSPS Fellow in Tokyo, Japan and in 2015 he received the ICPST Outstanding Achievement Award.

Email: director@cnf.cornell.edu

Senior Investigators

Nick Abbott

Nicholas Abbott, Member

Tisch University Professor, Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering