Graduate Student Accomplishments

2020

Awards

• Departmental Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant:Caleb Marshall
• Departmental Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant: Ryan Wilmington
• University Graduate Fellowship Award: Erin Crites, Andrew Comstock, Jesus Herrera
• Anderson Award:Caroline Evans
• Sayers Award:Erin Crites, Jingjing Huang, James Browning, Jesus Herrera, Caroline Evans
• Mitchell Award:Havva Hasret Nur
• Provost Doctoral Recruitment Fellowship:Erin Crites, Andrew Comstock, Jingjing Huang, and Jesus Herrera

Publications

• Indunil Chathurangani Angunawela: “The Critical Role of Materials’ Interaction in Realizing Organic Field-Effect Transistors Via High-Dilution Blending with Insulating Polymers“ (ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces)
• Abdulgani Annaberdiyev: “Accurate Atomic Correlation and Total Energies for Correlation Consistent Effective Core Potentials“ (Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation)
• Haowu Duan: “Entanglement, partial set of measurements, and diagonality of the density matrix in the parton model“ (Physical Review D)
• Akhil Francis: “Quantum computation of magnon spectra“ (Physical Review B)
• Jordan Frick: “An interface-controlled Mott memristor in α-RuCl₃“ (Applied Physics Letters)
• Zhengjie Huang: “Magneto-Optical Detection of Photoinduced Magnetism viaChirality-Induced Spin Selectivity in 2D Chiral Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Perovskites“ (ACS Nano)
• Ming Liu: “DNA looping by two 5-methylcytosine-binding proteins quantified using nanofluidic devices“ (Epigenetics & Chromatin)
• Minghao Pan: “First-principles analysis of magnetically doped transition-metal dichalcogenides“ (Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics)
• Holger Saare: “Effect of reactant dosing on selectivity during area-selective deposition of TiO₂ via integrated atomic layer deposition and atomic layer etching“ (Journal of Applied Physics)
• Caitlin Seed: “Correlation of high frequency QCM sphere-plate stiffness measurements with macroscopic frictional contacts in thin film and bulk stainless steel materials” (Sensors and Actuators A: Physical)
• Guangming Wang: “Binding and excitations in Si_xH_y molecular systems using quantum Monte Carlo(The Journal of Chemical Physics)
• Pengning Xu: “Dynamics of strand slippage in DNA hairpins formed by CAG repeats: roles of sequence parity and trinucleotide interrupts“(Nucleic Acids Research)
• Jiahui Zhang: “Atypical structures of GAA/TTC trinucleotide repeats underlying Friedreich’s ataxia: DNA triplexes and RNA/DNA hybrids“(Nucleic Acids Research)

2019

Awards

• Graduate Research Symposium participants: Somdutta Ghosh, Saeed Pegahan
• Departmental Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant: Sanjana Curtis
• Departmental Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant: William Fox
• University Graduate Fellowship Award: Theo Cooper, Kenya Gordon, Robert J Taylor
• Anderson Award: Theo Cooper
• Sayers Award: David Dickson, Robert J Taylor
• Ranney Award: Kenya Gordon
• SREB Fellowship: Kenya Gordon
• Provost Doctoral Recruitment Fellowship: Robert J Taylor

Publications

• Pengning Xu: “Toward Single Molecule FRET Studies of DNA Mismatch Repair in Live Bacteria” (Biophysical Journal)
• Pengyu Hao: “Untangling DNA Mismatch Repair Complexes with smFRET and Tethered Particle Motion Analysis” (Biophysical Journal)
• Guangming Wang: “A new generation of effective core potentials from correlated calculations: 4s and 4p main group elements and first row additions” (Journal of Chemical Physics)
• Ankit Kumar: “Higgs oscillations in time-resolved optical conductivity” (Physical Review B)
• Benjamin Heacock: “Measurement and alleviation of subsurface damage in a thick-crystal neutron interferometer” (Acta Crystallographica A-Foundation and Advances)
• Shih-Yuan Chen: “Distinguishing deformation mechanisms in elastocapillary experiments” (Soft Matter)
• Jiayong Zhang: “Large-Scale Phonon Calculations Using the Real-Space Multigrid Method” (Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation)
• William Lo: “Stick With It! Helping Students Understand Free-Body Diagrams – A Magnet Activity as a Tool for Understanding” (Physics Teacher)
• Lorin Baird: “Measuring the Hydrodynamic Linear Response of a Unitary Fermi Gas” (Physical Review Letters)
• Alireza Behtash: “Non-perturbative rheological behavior of a far-from-equilibrium expanding plasma” (Physics Letters B)
• Hossein Ardekani: “Reversible Photoluminescence Tuning by Defect Passivation via Laser Irradiation on Aged Monolayer MoS2” (ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces)
• Benjamin Heacock: “Angular alignment and fidelity of neutron phase-gratings for improved interferometer fringe visibility” (AIP Advances)
• Gabriel Firestone: “Photothermally-driven thermo-oxidative degradation of low density polyethylene: heterogeneous heating plus a complex reaction leads to homogeneous chemistry”

  (Nanotechnology)

• Zhongcan Xiao: “Ab initio investigation of the cyclodehydrogenation process for polyanthrylene transformation to graphene nanoribbons” (Npj Computational Materials)
• Robert Younts: “Near Band‐Edge Optical Excitation Leading to Catastrophic Ionization and Electron–Hole Liquid in Room‐Temperature Monolayer MoS 2” (Physica Status Solidi (b)
• Biplav Acharya: “Nanotribological Performance Factors for Aqueous Suspensions of Oxide Nanoparticles and Their Relation to Macroscale Lubricity” (Lubricants)
• Cody Melton: “Projector quantum Monte Carlo with averaged vs explicit spin-orbit effects: Applications to tungsten molecular systems” (Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids)
• Saeed Pegahan: “Spin-energy correlation in degenerate weakly interacting Fermi gases” (Physical Review A)
• Alireza Behtash: “Dynamical systems and nonlinear transient rheology of the far-from-equilibrium Bjorken flow” (Physical Review D)
• Sanaz Koohfar: “Confinement of magnetism in atomically thin La0.7Sr0.3CrO3/La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 heterostructures” (Npj Quantum Materials)
• Masoud Ghasemi: “Delineation of Thermodynamic and Kinetic Factors that Control Stability in Non-fullerene Organic Solar Cells” (Joule)
• Athby Al-Tawhid: “Growth-temperature dependence of conductivity at the LaCrO3/SrTiO3 (001) interface” (Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A)
• Ankit Kumar: “Identifying a forward-scattering superconductor through pump-probe spectroscopy” (Europhysics Letters)
• Zhongcan Xiao: “Design of Atomically Precise Nanoscale Negative Differential Resistance Devices” (Advanced Theory and Simulations)
• Nithya Arunkumar: “Designer Spatial Control of Interactions in Ultracold Gases” (Physical Review Letters)
• Indunil Angunawela: “Multi-length scale morphology of nonfullerene all-small molecule blends and its relation to device function in organic solar cells” (Materials Chemistry Frontiers)
• Daniel Nevola: “Rigid valence band shift due to molecular surface counter-doping of MoS2” (Surface Science)
• Caleb Marshall: “The Focal-Plane Detector Package on the TUNL Split-Pole Spectrograph” (IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement)

2018

Awards

• Graduate Research Symposium participants: Omadillo Abdurazakov, Patrick Barry, Samuel Flynn, Masoud Ghasemi, Christopher Kolb, Sanaz Koohfar, Zhongcan Xiao
• Departmental Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant: Ahmin Salehi
• Departmental Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant: Samanvitha Sridhar
• University Graduate Fellowship Award: Rifet Musedinovic
• Sayers Award: Ethan Blalock, Efekan Kokcu, Matthew Lippy
• Provost Doctoral Recruitment Fellowship: Matthew Lippy, Rifet Musedinovic

Publications

• Pengyu Hao: “Single Molecule Experiments Reveal Molecular Level Details of MutS-MutL Interactions in DNA Mismatch Activated Sliding Clamp” (Biophysical Journal)
• Pengyu Hao: “Single Molecule FRET Observations of Folding for DNA Hairpins Containing Trinucleotide Repeats” (Biophysical Journal)
• Sanjana Curtis: “PUSHing Core-collapse Supernovae to Explosions in Spherical Symmetry. III. Nucleosynthesis Yields” (The Astrophysical Journal)
• Daniel Nevola: “Phonon-Mediated Excited State Decay in High Energy Unoccupied Bands of the Topological Insulator Bi 1.5 Sb 0.5 Te 1.7 Se 1.3” (Bulletin of the American Physical Society)
• Robert Younts: “Catastrophic Ionization in Monolayer Transition Metal Dichalcogenides” (Bulletin of the American Physical Society)
• Zhongcan Xiao: “Design of Atomically Precise Nanoscale Negative Differential Resistance Devices” (Advanced Theory and Simulations)
• Saroj Dangi: “Nanoplumbing with 2D Metamaterials” (Small)
• Zachary Fredricks: “Tuning Nanoscale Friction by Applying Weak Magnetic Fields to Reorient Adsorbed Oxygen Molecules” (Condensed Matter)
• Robert Younts: “Charge generation dynamics in polymer nonfullerene solar cells with low energy loss” (Journal of Photonics for Energy)
• Omadillo Abdurazakov: “Nonequilibrium electron dynamics in pump-probe spectroscopy: Role of excited phonon populations” (Physical Review B)
• Brandon Long: “Resonance Raman Imagery of Semi-Fossilized Soft Tissues” (Ultrafast Nonlinear Imaging and Spectroscopy VI)
• Tongjie Chen: “Interfacial structure of SrZrxTi1−xO3 films on Ge” (Applied Physics Letters)
• Nithya Arunkumar: “Probing Energy-Dependent Feshbach Resonances by Optical Control” (Physical Review Letters)
• Yonglin Zhu: “Californium-254 and Kilonova Light Curves” (Astrophysical Journal Letters)
• Patrick Barry: “First Monte Carlo Global QCD Analysis of Pion Parton Distributions” (Physical Review Letters)
• Abdugani Annaberdiyev: “A new generation of effective core potentials from correlated calculations: 3d transition metal series” (Journal of Chemical Physics)
• M. Chandler Bennett: “A new generation of effective core potentials from correlated calculations: 2nd row elements” (Journal of Chemical Physics)
• Kory Green: “Optical Temperature Sensing With Infrared Excited Upconversion Nanoparticles” (Frontiers in Chemistry)
• Biplav Acharya: “Synergistic effect of nanodiamond and phosphate ester anti-wear additive blends” (Lubricants)
• Biplav Acharya: “In situ, real time studies of thermal reaction film formation temperatures for iron and 304SS surfaces immersed in 5% tricresyl phosphate in base oil” (Tribology International)
• Alireza Behtash: “Critical Points at Infinity, Non-Gaussian Saddles, and Bions” (Journal of High Energy Physics)
• Yue Yang: “Neutrino flavor transformation in supernovae as a probe for nonstandard neutrino-scalar interactions” (Physical Review D)
• Zhengxing Peng: “Measuring Temperature-Dependent Miscibility for Polymer Solar Cell Blends: An Easily Accessible Optical Method Reveals Complex Behavior” (Chemistry of Materials)
• Feng Pan: “Structure and dynamics of DNA and RNA double helices obtained from the CCG and GGC trinucleotide repeats” (Journal of Physical Chemistry. B, Condensed Matter, Materials, Surfaces, Interfaces & Biophysical)
• Yuan Zhang: “Structural and dynamical characterization of DNA and RNA quadruplexes obtained from the GGGGCC and GGGCCT hexanucleotide repeats associated with C9FTD/ALS and SCA36 diseases” (ACS Chemical Neuroscience)
• Zhu Tang: “Nonlocal rheology of dense granular flow in annular shear experiments” (Soft Matter)
• Alireza Behtash: “More on homological supersymmetric quantum mechanics” (Physical Review D)
• Benjamin Heacock: “Increased interference fringe visibility from the post-fabrication heat treatment of a perfect crystal silicon neutron interferometer” (Review of Scientific Instruments)
• Alireza Behtash: “Far-from-equilibrium attractors and nonlinear dynamical systems approach to the Gubser flow” (Physical Review D)
• Gabriel Firestone: “Facile measurement of surface heat loss from polymer thin films via fluorescence thermometry” (Journal of Polymer Science. Part B, Polymer Physics)
• Jayampathi Kangara: “Atom pairing in optical superlattices” (Physical Review Letters)
• Yue Yang: “Neutrino flavour evolution through fluctuating matter” (Journal of Physics. G, Nuclear and Particle Physics)
• Feng Pan: “E-motif formed by extrahelical cytosine bases in DNA homoduplexes of trinucleotide and hexanucleotide repeats” (Nucleic Acids Research)

2017

Awards

• Graduate Research Symposium participants: Patrick Barry, Charles J. Stapleford
• Recognition for Excellence in Laboratory Teaching by the Graduate Student Association: Anamaria Trandafir, Bailing Ma, Sara Jafaripazoki, Samanvitha Sridhar
• Departmental Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant: Masoud Ghasemi
• Departmental Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant: Samanvitha Sridhar
• University Graduate Fellowship Award: Caitlin Seed, Robert Valdillez, Dovletgeldi Seyitliyev, Jin Ha Choi
• Anderson Award: Gregory Johnson
• Sayers Award: Caitlin Seed, Keith Hillaire
• Mitchell Award: Robert Valdillez
• SREB Fellowship: Robert Valdillez
• Provost Doctoral Recruitment Fellowship: Jin Ha Choi
• SEAS Fellowship: Samuel Stuard
• GAANN Nuclear Science and Engineering Fellowship: Eric Dees, Samuel Flynn, Charles Stapleford, Christian White

Publications

• Biplav Acharya: “A combined QCM and AFM study exploring the nanoscale lubrication mechanism of silica nanoparticles in aqueous suspension” (Tribology Letters)
• Chandler Bennett: “A new generation of effective core potentials for correlated calculations” (Journal of Chemical Physics)
• Colin Curtis: “A comparative study of the nanoscale and macroscale tribological attributes of alumina and stainless steel surfaces immersed in aqueous suspensions of positively or negatively charged nanodiamonds” (Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology)
• Andrew Deloach: “Coverage dependent molecular assembly of anthraquinone on Au(111)” (Journal of Chemical Physics)
• Matthew Gilmer: “Pair-instability supernova simulations: Progenitor evolution, explosion, and light curves“ (Astrophysical Journal)
• Christopher Kolb: “Evolution of a pulsar wind nebula within a composite supernova remnant” (Astrophysical Journal)
• Sanaz Koohfar: “Structural distortions at polar manganite interfaces“ (Physical Review B)
• Cody Melton: “Quantum Monte Carlo with variable spins: Fixed-phase and fixed-node approximations” (Physical Review E)
• Yue Yang: “GR effects in supernova neutrino flavor transformations” (Physical Review D)
• Biplav Acharya: “Quartz crystal microbalance apparatus for study of viscous liquids at high temperatures” (Review of Scientific Instruments)
• Alireza Behtash: “Toward Picard-Lefschetz Theory of Path Integrals, Complex Saddles and Resurgence” (Annals of Mathematical Sciences and Applications)
• Chandler Bennett: “A quantum Monte Carlo study of mono(benzene) TM and bis(benzene) TM systems” (Chemical Physics Letters)
• Joshua Carpenter: “Flexible inorganic ferroelectric thin films for nonvolatile memory devices” (Advanced Functional Materials)
• Joshua Carpenter, Xuechen Jiao: “High-efficiency nonfullerene organic solar cells: Critical factors that affect complex multi-length scale morphology and device performance” (Advanced Energy Materials)
• Joshua Carpenter: “A regioregular conjugated polymer for high performance thick-film organic solar cells without processing additive” (Journal of Materials Chemistry)
• Christopher Cude-Woods, Bryan Zeck: “A new method for measuring the neutron lifetime using an in situ neutron detector” (Review of Scientific Instruments)
• Eric Dees, Bryan Zeck: “Total cross sections for ultracold neutrons scattered from gases” (Physical Review C)
• Masoud Ghasemi: “9.73% efficiency nonfullerene all organic small molecule solar cells with absorption-complementary donor and acceptor” (Journal of the American Chemical Society)
• Masoud Ghasemi: “Panchromatic sequentially cast ternary polymer solar cells”  (Advanced Materials)
• Matthew Gilmer: “Phosphorylation-induced conformational dynamics in an intrinsically disordered protein and potential role in phenotypic heterogeneity” (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)
• Kory Green: “Enhancement of upconverted fluorescence by interference layers” (Small)
• Pengyu Hao: “Fast evolving pair-instability supernova models: evolution, explosion, light curves” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America)
• Benjamin Heacock: “Neutron interferometer crystallographic imperfections and gravitationally induced quantum interference measurements” (Physical Review A)
• Xuechen Jiao: “Crystallization of sensitizers controls morphology and performance in Si-/C-PCPDTBT-sensitized P3HT:ICBA ternary blends” (Macromolecules)
• Xuechen Jiao: “Control of mesoscale morphology and photovoltaic performance in diketopyrrolopyrrole-based small band gap terpolymers” (Advanced Energy Materials)
• Austin Reid: “Geometry and design of origami bellows with tunable response” (Physical Review E)
• Robert Younts: “Efficient generation of long-lived triplet excitons in 2D hybrid perovskite” (Advanced Materials)
• Robert Younts: “Generating high dielectric constant blends from lower dielectric constant dipolar polymers using nanostructure engineering” (Nano Energy)
• Yuan Zhang: “Structure and dynamics of DNA and RNA double helices obtained from the GGGGCC and CCCCGG hexanucleotide repeats that are the hallmark of C9FTD/ALS diseases” (ACS Chemical Neuroscience)