Graduate Students
Students working on EPSCoR grant:
Karin Bichler
Student of Gerald Schneider
Karin joined the PhD program in Physics at Louisiana State University in spring 2017 and studies the structure of polymers in solution. Ms. Bichler has conducted small angle neutron scattering experiments at NIST (Gaithersburg, MD) and ANSTO (Sydney, Australia) as well as NMR measurements in Darmstadt (Germany).
Ramakanta Chapai
Student of Rongying Jin
Rama is a PhD student in Physics at Louisiana State University. He is assisting Dr. Jin with hard matter experiments and has conducted experiments at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, FL.
Natalia da Silva Moura
Student of James Dorman
Natalia is a PhD student in Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University. Her research involves synthesizing and functionalizing iron oxide nanoparticles in spherical, cubic, and hexagonal shape. She has analyzed catalytic properties under induction heating over different time frames, ranging from 5 to 50 minutes, as well as catalytic properties under conventional thermal heating. Natalia visited ORNL for neutron scattering measurements and presented and received a research award.
Pragathi Darapaneni
Student of James Dorman
Pragathi is a PhD student in Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University. Her research interests include weak field tuning of transition metal dpoant symmetry in solid hosts.
Judith De Mel
Student of Gerald Schneider
Judith De Mel is a PhD student in Macromolecular Chemistry working under the guidance of Prof. Gerald Schneider. Ms. De Mel's dissertation work focuses on phospholipid vesicles and nanoscale interactions with other molecules and nano-objects leading to changes in structure and dynamics. This involves scattering techniques (DLS, SAXS, SANS, NSE) and microscopy (cryo-TEM). Her research interests revolve around the characterization of nanocarriers and drug delivery applications. She has conducted neutron scattering experiments at multiple federal and international neutron facilities.
Xin Gui
Student of Weiwei Xie
Xin is pursuing a PhD in chemistry at Louisiana State University. Xin works with Dr. Weiwei Xie on soft matter experiments.
Stefan Huber
Student of Gerald Schneider
Stefan is a PhD candidate in Physics at Louisiana State University. He is assisting Dr. Schneider with setting up the soft matter experiment laboratory and conducting neutron spin echo experiments.
Naeyma Islam
Student of Steve Rick
Naeyma is a graduate student in Chemistry at the University of New Orleans. She is involved in the simulation of poly-acetic acid polymers and the development of constant-pH methods. Ms. Islam has done thorough testing of the coarse-grained models to validate them as well as testing of constant-pH algorithms developed in the lab, which allows for rapid sampling of protonation states.
Bruno Jakobi
Student of Gerald Schneider
Bruno is a PhD candidate in Chemistry at Louisiana State University. He is assisting Dr. Schneider with the soft matter experiment laboratory and conducts small angle neutron scattering experiments at NIST (Gaithersburg, MD) and ANSTO (Sydney, Australia).
Jin Gyun Lee
Student of Bhuvnesh Bharti
Jin Gyun is a PhD student in Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University. He is currently working with Dr. Bharti on soft matter research.
Yingzhen Ma
Student of Bhuvnesh Bharti
Yingzhen is a PhD student in Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University. He is currently working with Dr. Bharti on soft matter self-assembly in hard matter confinement.
Madalynn Marshall
Student of Weiwei Xie
Madalynn is pursuing a PhD in Chemistry at Louisiana State University. She works with Professor Xie on tuning chemical pressure to synthesize new phases.
Ly Ngo
Student of Gerald Schneider
Ly is a PhD student in the Department of Chemistry at Louisiana State University. Ly works with Professor Schneider on the synthesis of liposomes.
Marzhana Omarova
Student of Vijay John
Marzhana is a student of Dr. Vijay John and is pursuing a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Tulane University. She is researching soft matter synthesis and neutron scattering.
Rasangi Perera
Student of Gerald Schneider
Rasangi is pursuing a PhD in Chemistry at Louisiana State University. Ms. Perera researches the structure and dynamics of polymers in solution.
Kanun Pokharel
Student of Jianwei Sun
Kanun is a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics at Tulane University. He received his bachelor's degree from Tribhuvan University, Nepal.
Karunya Shirali
Student of Ilya Vekhter
Karunya is pursuing a PhD in Physics at Louisiana State University. She works with Dr. Vekhter on hard matter research.
Garrett Sternhagen
Student of Donghui Zhang
Garrett is a PhD student in Chemistry at Louisiana State University. He works on the investigation of the effect of charge-charge interaction in the micellar structure and dynamics using the sequence-defined peptoid amphiphile model (Direct 2). Garrett has been working on the synthesis of sequence-defined peptoid amphiphiles and their polymeric analogs and characterizing their solution morphologies by TEM and DLS. He will also travel to SNS to conduct neutron scattering experiments on these micelle solutions.
Eklavya Thareja
Student of Ilya Vekhter
Eklavya is a PhD student in Physics at Louisiana State University. He works with Dr. Vekhter on hard matter research.
Kevin Igor Mkam Tsengam
Student of Vijay John
Christopher Van Leeuwen
Student of Gerald Schneider
Christopher is a PhD student in the Chemistry Department at Louisiana State University. He is assisting Dr. Schneider with the soft matter experiment laboratory.
Yao Wu
Student of William Shelton
Yao is a PhD student in the Chemical Engineering Department at Louisiana State University.
Tianyi Yu
Student of Donghui Zhang
Tianyi is pursuing a PhD in Chemistry at Louisiana State University. Tianyi has synthesized and characterized the hydrophobically modified polypeptoids (HMPs) to be used in the SANS study of interactions and structural evolution of liposome with HMPs through a collaboration with Dr. Vijay John (Tulane).