Principal Investigator

Prof. Lara Estroff

Herbert Fisk Johson Professor of Industrial Chemistry
Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Previous Education:
Swarthmore College, B.A. Chemistry 1997
Yale University, Ph.D. Chemistry 2003
Harvard University, NIH Postdoctoral Researcher 2003-2005

Professional Background - Curriculum Vitae

Postdoctoral Research Associates

Dr. Christopher Petroff

cpetroff@cornell.edu

Previous Education:
Boston College, B.S. Chemistry 2015
University of Pittsburgh, Ph.D. Chemistry, 2021

Chris is a joint postdoc between the Estroff group and the Marohn group in the Chemistry and Chemical Biology department. His research focuses on metal halide perovskites for solar applications. Specifically, he is working to better understand how processing conditions affect the morphology, crystal texture, and other properties of blade coated thin films and how these changes affect the resulting optoelectronic properties of the films.

Ph.D. Students

Stephan Sutter

ss2667@cornell.edu

Previous Education:
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, B.S. Biochemistry, Biological Sciences, 2020

My primary research interest is studying biological materials involved in pathological mineralization, particularly the matrix-mineral interactions of calcifications found in breast tumors. I aim to use Raman spectroscopy and (cryo) electron microscopy to study the tumor microenvironment and understand the role that calcifications play in the growth and spread of breast tumors.

Kuan-Ting Liu

kl633@cornell.edu

Previous Education:
National Taiwan University, B.S. Materials Science and Engineering, 2020

I joined the group in fall 2021 as a Ph.D. student in MSE. I'm working in the Perovskite Project, which is funded by DOE, and collaborated with many research groups and national labs. My research focuses on using in-situ AFM and NMR to study the mechanism of growth of perovskite crystals and solution chemistry.

Emily Hiralal

eeh82@cornell.edu

Previous Education:
Northwestern University, B.A. Chemistry and B.A. Biological Sciences, 2022

Emily Hiralal is a PhD student in the Chemistry and Chemical Biology department. She is co-advised by Lara Estroff and John Marohn. Her research focuses on the synthesis and optoelectronic characterization of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite single crystals and thin films.

Brenda Javier-Boodhan

bsj32@cornell.edu

Previous Education:
Universidad Ana G. Mendez Recinto de Carolina, B.S. Biotechnology, 2021
Cornell University, M.S. Materials Science and Engineering 2024

My research focuses on mapping calcifications and their associated organic matrix from human tissues using FTIR microscopy and examine potential relationships between mineral properties and disease state. I am working in collaboration with the Butcher group in the School of Biomedical Engineering, where we have obtained a set of calcified human heart valve samples with associated patient data ready for spectroscopic analysis.

Undergraduates

Kenadee Morrow

My primary research interest is biomineralization seen in marine invertebrates, such as barnacles and corals. In the Estroff group I will be studying how the calcification of barnacles shortly after the larval stage is impacted by changing aspects of our oceans, including salinity, pH, temperature, etc.

Ethan Seiz

I'm a first-year from New York City studying computer science. The research project I'm helping with seeks to better understand and quantify the lacunar-canalicular networks in subchondral bone. In order to do this, we take CT scans of bone and annotate components of them including the cartilage, bone marrow, and lacuna. The resulting non-annotated space is a class that contains the osteocytes and lacunar-canalicular network. I'm working on refining a dataset of existing segmentations and training a deep learning network to automatically annotate scans.

Group Alumni

Name	Position or Degree	Current Position
Victorien Bernat	M.S. Materials Science & Engineering, 2024	——
Mahdi Ayoubi	Postdoctoral Associate, 2022–2024	Thermo Fischer Scientific, Hillsboro, OR
Wanting (Ting) Zhang	M.S. Materials Science & Engineering, 2024	——
Chih-Yi (Joyce) Wang	M.S. Materials Science & Engineering, 2024	Ph.D. Student, University of Florida
Konrad Hedderick	Ph.D. Materials Science & Engineering, 2024	Postdoc, Universite de Geneve
Leyin Zheng	M.S. Materials Science & Engineering, 2023	Project Executive, BOC Sciences, Shirley, NY
Olivia Rogers	M.S. Materials Science & Engineering, 2023	Mechanical Engineer, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD
Jennie Kunitake	Ph.D. Materials Science & Engineering, 2021	Senior Scientist, Molecular Pharmaceutics, Pfizer
Dana Chapman	Ph.D. Materials Science & Engineering, 2022	Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University
Florence Lui	Visiting Fulbright Scholar, 2021	Ph.D. Candidate, University of New South Wales, Sydney, AUS
Xun Wang	M.S. Materials Science & Engineering, 2021	——
Derek Hu	M.S. Materials Science & Engineering, 2021	——
Wennie Lee	M.S. Materials Science & Engineering, 2021	——

The Lara Estroff Research Group