01/28/2025 – Congratulations to Sheryl Sanchez for receiving Best Graduate Presentation award for Symposium MTO2 at MRS Fall 2024 meeting for her presentation titled “Accelerating Bandgap Discovery in Hybrid Perovskites with Advanced Modeling Technics“
1/28/25 – Elham Foadian has been awarded the prestigious Center for Materials Processing (CMP) Graduate Fellowship. This fellowship recognizes her dedication to advancing research in materials processing and supports her contributions to a focused and impactful project within this field.
1/10/25 – The paper “Impact of Halogen Groups on the Properties of PEA-Based 2D Pb–Sn Halide Perovskites” by Elham Foadian, Sheryl L. Sanchez, Sumner B. Harris, Benjamin J. Lawrie, Astita Dubey, Yipeng Tang, Bin Hu, Jonghee Yang, and Mahshid Ahmadi has been published in the prestigious Advanced Optical Materials journal.
12/06/2024 – Sheryl Sanchez delivered an oral presentation on “Unlocking the Potential of Cesium Lead Bromide Nanocrystals—Stability and Growth Insights from High-Throughput Synthesis” at Symposium NM07: Building Advanced Materials via Aggregation and Self-Assembly, MRS Fall Meeting.
12/05/2024 – Sheryl Sanchez delivered a presented a poster “Active Learning for the Hybrid Perovskite Discovery—Co-Navigating the Literature and Experimental Synthesis” at Symposium EL04: Recent Advances in Hybrid Perovskites, MRS Fall Meeting.
12/04/2024 – Elham Foadian presented a poster on “Decoding the Broadband Emission of Two-Dimensional Pb-Sn Halide Perovskites Through High-Throughput Exploration” at Symposium MT04, MRS Fall Meeting, in Boston.
12/03/2024 – Sheryl Sanchez presented an oral presentation on “Accelerating Bandgap Discovery in Hybrid Perovskites with Advanced Modeling Techniques” at Symposium MT02: Machine Learning in Action—Automated and Autonomous Experiments, MRS Fall Meeting.
12/03/2024 – Dr. Ahmadi gave an invited talk on “Merging High-Throughput Autonomous Experiments and Machine Learning to Accelerate the Discovery of Two-Dimensional Halide Perovskites” at Symposium MT02, MRS Fall Meeting, in Boston.
12/2024 – Congratulations to our team at UTK, our collaborators at Yonsei University, ORNL, and Hanyang University for publishing an article in Advanced Energy Materials.
M. Um,‡ S. L. Sanchez,‡ H. Song,‡ B. J. Lawrie, H. Ahn, S. V. Kalinin, Y. Liu*, H. Choi*, J. Yang*, M. Ahmadi*, “Tailoring Molecular Space to Navigate Phase Complexity in Cs-based Quasi-2D Perovskites via Gated-Gaussian-Driven High-Throughput Discovery” (Advanced Energy Materials, 2024, 2404655).
The North Star goal of AHMADI’s lab is using light to make world a cleaner place by removing distributed pollutants. Synthesis robots and machine learning can help!
08/24/2024 _ “Decoding the Broadband Emission of 2D Pb-Sn Halide Perovskites through High-Throughput Exploration” paper was published: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202411164
08/13/2024 – Welcome a new Robot (Spinbot) to Ahmadi’s lab! We have the unique system where the spinbot is placed in a glove box for an inert environment and has the capability of in-situ PL and absorption. We welcome any collaboration for discovery, design and optimization of perovskites for solar cells and other applications.
08/09/2024 – “Accelerating Materials Discovery by High-Throughput GIWAXS Characterization of Quasi-2D Formamidinium Metal Halide Perovskites” paper was published: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202409293
05/21/2024 – Professor Ahmadi presented a seminar at Molecular Foundry – Lawrance Berkeley National Lab. She elaborated on “Building science of manufacturing for halide perovskites, from microcrystal libraries to thin films”.
05/20/2024 – Welcoming our new undergraduate assistant, Jordan Marshall, to our team!
04/2024 – Congratulations to Professor Ahmadi for receiving the 2024 Tickle College of Engineering Professional Promise in Research Award.
03/28/2024 _ Professor Ahmadi presented an educational pitch on “The new generation of solar cells” to the executives and policy makers from Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in an event hosted by UTK Institute for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing.
03/2024 – Congratulations to both our alumni postdocs for initiating their positions as assistant professors in South Korea.
03/2024 – Dr. Jonghee Yang begins as an assistant professor at Yonsei University, department of Chemistry.
03/2024 – Dr. Dohyung Kim starts as an assistant professor at Chungbuk National University, Department of Advanced Materials Engineering.
02/27/2024 – Congratulations to Dr. Astita Dubey for publication and journal cover: “Lead-Free Halide Perovskites for Photocatalysis via High-Throughput Exploration” https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.1c05441#
02/14/2024 – Professor Ahmadi gave an invited talk at the 2024 American Ceramic Society (ACeR), Electronic Materials and Applications (EMA) conference in Denver, Colorado.
12/2023 – Welcoming our new member, Seongbeom Lee, visiting graduate student from Hanyang University, South Korea from Professor Hyosung Choi’s group.
11/01/2023 – Dr. Astita Dubey, our new postdoctoral scientist, has been awarded the highly competitive PRIME Fellowship from Germany which provides 18 months of full funding for her research. Dr. Dubey’s selection among the top 25 candidates in Germany is a testament to her capabilities and dedication.
10/31/2023 – We are fortunate and grateful to Thermofisher for donating two liquid handling systems: Tecan (Fluent) and Hamilton (Microlab Star) to Ahmadi’s lab for advancing lab robotics and materials discovery. Stay tuned for official announcements!
10/31/2023 – We welcome Dr. Astita Dubey for joining Prof. Ahmadi’s and Kalinin’s lab from University of Duisburg-Essen as a postdoctoral research associate supported via Germany DAAD’s PRIME program to work on Photo-Conversion of Methane: Perovskite Ferro-Photocatalysts as a Potential Solution.
10/24/2023 – Dr. Ahmadi recently attended a workshop for Creating a National Network of Cloud and Self-Driving Labs at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh where she was an invited panelist to discuss the “Remote Cloud and SDL-Enabled Scientific Research with a focused Topic on “Amplifying Experimental Sciences”. Session Lead: Milad Abolhasani and Subject Matter Experts: S. Kalinin, G. Kusne, and M. Ahmadi. She also visited the amazing CMU Emerald Cloud Lab® (ECL®):
09/24/2023 – Congratulations Dr. Jonghee Yang for his recent publication in Advanced Energy Materials. More can be found here: J. Yang, B. J. Lawrie, S. V Kalinin, M. Ahmadi, “High-Throughput Automated Exploration of Phase Growth Behaviors in Quasi-2D Formamidinium Metal Halide Perovskites” Advanced Energy Materials (2023) 2302337.
08/23/2023 – Dr. Ahmadi was an invited speaker in 2023 Accelerate Conference as part of The Acceleration Consortium held at the University of Toronto, Canada.
08/22/2023 – Congratulations Elham Foadianfor winning travel award during CMP Poster Night.
08/19/2023 – Congratulations Sheryl Sanchez for winning the MSE travel award to attend MRS Fall meeting 2023.
08/02/2023 – Dr. Ahmadi was an invited speaker for the 8th Annual John Hopkins Summer School on Data Driven Materials Discovery: From ML to Maker Space. Organized by Prof. Tyrel McQueen and Prof. David Elbert.
07/20/2023 – Congratulation Holland Hysmith for her first author publication in collaboration with NREL. More can be found here: H. Hysmith, S. Y. Park, J. Yang, A. Ievlev, Y. Liu, K. Zhu, B. Sumpter, J. Berry, M. Ahmadi*, O. Ovchinnikova*, “The Role of SnO2 Processing on Ionic Distribution in Double Cation-Double Halide Perovskites” ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2023).
06/26/2023 – Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the National Science Foundation, talks with Sheryl Sanchez (our PhD student) while touring AHMADI’s Lab inside the Institute for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (IAMM): https://news.utk.edu/2023/06/26/nsf-director-visits-ut-for-mobility-showcase/
05/31/2023 – Congratulation to Sheryl and Jonghee for publishing in “Matter”. In this paper, a high-throughput automated experimental workflow was utilized for perovskite nanocrystal synthesis. The effects of chemical and processing parameters on perovskite nanocrystals functionalities were explored and also SHAP, a machine learning method, assessed the impact of synthesis parameters. Check out the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matt.2023.05.023
05/30/2023 – A nice summary of recent work in the field of lab automation by Dr. Ahmadi and our postdoc, Dr. Jonghee Yang published in “Nature Synthesis”. The Ahmadi lab (eponymous with abbreviation of Advancing Hybrid Materials by an Automated Discovery Innovation lab) was one of the first to start the automated synthesis program in US 4 years ago, and have been steadily evolving this direction through synergy of synthesis, characterization, and machine learning. Check out the comment here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-023-00337-z
03/08/2023 – Dr. Ahmadi was featured on MRS website during International Women’s day:
03/01/2023 – Dr Ahmadi was an invited speaker for the MRS 2023 webinar, titled: “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) for Experimental Materials Science”: https://mrs.digitellinc.com/live/1283/page/6788
02/21-02/23/2023 – Dr. Ahmadi was a panelist at 2023 MaRDA Annual Meeting, Data Infrastructure and Labs of the Future, Virtual February 21–23- Panel Presentations and Open Discussion includes: Brad Olsen (MIT), Tim Erdmann (IBM), June Lau (NIST), Mahshid Ahmadi (University of Tennessee) https://www.marda-alliance.org/blog-2/marda2023/
01/03/2023 – Congratulation to Sheryl for the acceptance of her first paper in Advanced Intelligent Systems entitled “Exploring the Evolution of Metal Halide Perovskites via Latent Representations of the Photoluminescent Spectra”: DOI: 10.1002/aisy.202200340
01/01/2023 – Happy-New-Year! celebrating together:
12/16/2022 _ Congratulations to our postdoc, Dr. Yang, for his recent publication in Advanced Energy Materials in collaboration with Prof. Correa’s team from Georgia Tech.: “Understanding the Role of Cesium on Chemical Complexity in Methylammonium-Free Metal Halide Perovskites“: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aenm.202202880
12/01/2022 _ Dr. Ahmadi gave an invited talk at MRS Fall meetings in Boston, presenting our latest research on the use of imaging with spatial resolution to study hybrid perovskites.
11/2022 _ Holland was recognized as the runner-up for the 2022 Fall AVS Nanoscale Science & Technology Graduate Student Competition! She gave a 5 minute rapid-fire talk in front of a panel of judges and audience members for her work titled “The Role of SnO2 Processing on Ionic Distribution in Double Cation-Double Halide Perovskites“.
10/2022 _ Congrats to Holland for being the Student Poster Award winner at the 2022 Annual CNMS User Meeting for her work titled “The Role of SnO2 Processing on Ionic Distribution in Double Cation-Double Halide Perovskites”: https://www.ornl.gov/news/cnms-user-meeting-recognizes-students-and-staff
03/26/2022 _ Congrats to our former postdoc. Dr. Kim, for acceptance of his work on “Light–ferroelectric interaction in two-dimensional lead iodide perovskites” in the journal of Materials Chemistry A.
03/08/2022 _ Dr. Ahmadi was featured on celebrating MRS Women in Science on International Women’s Day _ https://www.mrs.org/careers-advancement/international-womens-day-2022
12/25/2021 _ Congratulations to Dr. Ahmadi and her collaborators at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, Charles University (Czech Republic) and UTK on “Origin of Defects and Positron Annihilation in Hybrid and All-Inorganic Perovskites” in the journal of Materials Chemistry. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.1c03540
12/03/2021 _ Congratulations to Dr. Higgins for defending her Ph.D. thesis and becoming the first Ph.D. student to graduate from Dr. Ahmadi’s Laboratory:
11/19/2021 _ Congrats to Kate for her recent publication in the Journal of American Chemical Society (JACS) entitled “High-Throughput Study of Antisolvents on the Stability of Multicomponent Metal Halide Perovskites through Robotics-Based Synthesis and Machine Learning Approaches” https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.1c10045
11/01/2021 _ We’d like to welcome Dr. Yang to our group and appreciate his participation in our research endeavors.
10/25/2021 _ Congratulation to Dr. Ahmadi and her collaborators at UTK (Dr. Lass) and ORNL (Dr. Ziatdinov and Dr. Kalinin) and Hong Kong Baptist University (Dr. Zhou), for publication of a perspective in “Joule” on “Machine learning for high-throughput experimental exploration of metal halide perovskites” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435121004451?via%3Dihub
08/12/2021 _ Congratulation to Dr. Ahmadi’s team and her collaborators at ORNL and University of New South Wales, Australia for publication of “Unraveling the Hysteretic Behavior at Double Cations-Double Halides Perovskite – Electrode Interfaces” in the journal of Nano Energy! Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2021.106428
07/13/2021 _ Congratulation to Dr. Kim for his publication in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Elucidating the Spatial Dynamics of Charge Carriers in Quasi-Two-Dimensional Perovskites
05/26/2021_Published, Journal: Chemistry of Materials, https://pubs.acs.org/articlesonrequest/AOR-CAYN7ZFCZHYUIQQHKA9Y, Title: “Ferroelectric and Carrier Transport Properties in Strain-engineered Two-Dimensional Lead Iodide Perovskites“.
05/20/2021 _ Dr. Kim had a talk at the 2021 ISAF-ISIF-PFM Joint Conference (May 16-20, 2021, Sydney, Australia), https://isaf-isif-pfm2021.org/, D3L-2: Processing: Thin Films I “Ferroelectric and Carrier Transport Properties in Strain-engineered Two-Dimensional Lead Iodide Perovskites“.
05/18/2021 _ Accepted, Journal: Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Title: “Exploring Responses of contact-Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy in Triple Cation Double Halide Perovskites”
05/12/2021 _ Accepted, Journal: Chemistry of Materials, Title: “Ferroelectric and Carrier Transport Properties in Strain-engineered Two-Dimensional Lead Iodide Perovskites“.
05/06/2021 _ (Preview) Published, Journal: Matter, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590238521001673?dgcid=author, Title: “Navigating grain boundaries in perovskite solar cells”.
04/20/2021 _ Dr. Ahmadi was invited to talk at the MRS Spring Meeting 2021 Symposium EN06.08: Take a Closer Look at Perovskite Semiconductors; Title of talk: Guiding Automated Synthesis of Metal Halide Perovskites towards Enhanced Stability:
04/26/2021 _ Congratulations to Dohyung for acceptance of his paper in Advanced Science. Title: “Exploring Transport Behavior in Hybrid Perovskites Solar Cells via Machine Learning Analysis of Environmental-dependent Impedance Spectroscopy“.
04/18/2021 _ Kate gave a talk at MRS Spring meeting 2021 SESSION CT05.02: Automation and High Throughput I Title: “Robotics-Enabled Exploration of Multicomponent Lead Halide Perovskites via Machine Learning“.
3/12/21 _ Kate and Amanda published an invited paper in Nanophotonics on “Exploring the physics of cesium lead halide perovskites quantum dots via Bayesian inference of the photoluminescence spectra in automated experiment”. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/nanoph-2020-0662/html
2/2021 _ Dr. Ahmadi secured the second-year continuation of joint UTK-ORNL science alliance (StART) funding for further development of “Machine Learning Driven Experimental Approach for the Discovery of New Organic-Inorganic Halide Perovskites for Optoelectronic Applications”
12/30/2020 _ Dr. Ahmadi is the recipient of prestigious 2021 National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Award “Guiding Automated Synthesis of Hybrid Perovskites Towards Stability via Knowledge of Nanoscale Ionic Mechanisms”
12/29/2020 _ Dr. Ahmadi’s and ORNL’s collaborative study on “Giant isotope effect on phonon dispersion and thermal conductivity in methylammonium lead iodide” was highlighted in Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Department of Energy (DOE) website: https://www.energy.gov/science/bes/articles/some-it-hot-boosting-efficiency-solar-cells
12/28/2020 _ Kate’s paper in collaboration with ORNL was highlighted on ORNL website: https://www.ornl.gov/news/automated-chemistry-sets-new-pace-materials-discovery
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