People

Pooja Basera
Postdoctoral Researcher, SLAC

Pooja is a Postdoctoral Fellow at SUNCAT, SLAC, Stanford University. She obtained her PhD in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. Her research interests within LiSA include establishing a foundational understanding of how a heterogeneous CO2R photocatalytic mechanism is affected by its surrounding microenvironment and exploring alternative anodic reactions that can yield valuable molecular products.

Activities in Sunrise Network: Pooja leads a career development program designed to assist junior researchers in planning and achieving their career goals.

Grace Chen
Graduate Student, Caltech

Grace is a PhD candidate in the See and Manthiram groups at Caltech. Her research within LiSA involves tailoring microenvironments of the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide in nonaqueous electrolytes and the electrochemical oxidation of olefins for the formation of selective products.

Activities in Sunrise Network: Grace leads the DEI initiatives within LiSA, focusing on planning and engaging in outreach activities within the local communities as well as providing space within the Hub to encourage community building.

Richard Kang
Graduate Student, LBNL

Richard is a PhD candidate in the Martin Head-Gordon group at LBNL. Within LiSA, his work is centered around modeling various dissolution/deposition mechanisms of electrochemical interfaces using Density Functional Theory (DFT). He is also interested in improving predictive powers of DFT in modeling core-excited states using relativistic physics, to assist developments in X-ray spectroscopy.

Activities in Sunrise Network: Richard coordinates and plans outreach initiatives within LiSA, aiming to collaborate with local volunteer organizations in coordinating opportunities and developing lesson plans to make solar fuels science more accessible to the future generation of scientists. Richard is also interested in organizing community building events within LiSA as well.

Katie Luedecke
Graduate Student, Caltech

Katie is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in Prof. Ryan Hadt’s lab at Caltech. In LiSA, she leverages various spectroscopic and electrochemical techniques to elucidate the mechanism of and identify key intermediates involved in molecular and heterogeneous COx reduction. 

Activities in Sunrise Network: Katie leads inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) initiatives within LiSA by working to promote and moderate dialogue surrounding IDEA in science and to organize outreach activities in local communities. Katie also works on the organization and implementation of junior researcher career development activities, particularly in collaboration with other research hubs (e.g., CHASE). 

Zeb Schichtl
Postdoctoral Researcher, NREL

Zeb is a postdoctoral researcher in the Materials, Chemical, and Computational Science directorate at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He obtained his PhD in chemistry from the University of Arkansas. His research interests within LiSA involve the (photo)electrochemical characterization of carbon dioxide systems that maintain activity under variable illumination conditions.

Activities in Sunrise Network: Zeb leads the career development programs, which focuses on assisting LiSA junior researchers in planning and achieving their career goals.  

Jennifer Urbine
Graduate Student, UCI

Jennifer Urbine is a 5th year PhD candidate at the University of California, Irvine under the guidance of Prof. Shane Ardo. Within LiSA, she researches with the Microenvironments Team, where she developed a novel technique to measure the Donnan Potential at ionomer | liquid electrolyte interfaces. This works allows for the measurement and tunability of the electrochemical landscape of working electrode | ionomer | liquid electrolyte systems and thus the measurement and control of transport of charged species to catalytic centers for CO2RR.

Activities in Sunrise Network: As the BES Early Career Network Representative for LiSA, Jen works with the Sunrise Network as the liaison between the greater DOE community across various hubs and centers to organize DEI and career building activities for junior researchers within LiSA.