HOME Former members

Group Members of Gall’s Thin Films and Nanostructures Laboratory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

		Daniel Gall Professor
		Prof. Daniel Gall joined RPI in 2002. He leads the Thin Films and Nanostructures group. For more details see his professional or personal homepages. Office: MRC 204 Email: galld@rpi.edu
		Ruopeng Deng Ph.D. Candidate
		Ruopeng joined our group in Fall 2009. His work is on nitride nanostructured coatings for novel device applications. Office: MRC 130A Email: dengr@rpi.edu
		Paul Papi Ph.D. Candidate
		PJ joined our group in Fall 2010. He works on nanoporous self-lubricating hard coatings. Office: MRC 130A Email: papip@rpi.edu
		Paul Jamison Ph.D. Candidate
		Paul joined our group in Fall 2010. He studies the effect of atomic shadowing and directional ion bombardment on nanostructure development. Office: MRC 130A Email: jamisp@rpi.edu
		Dan Guan Ph.D. Candidate
		Dan joined our group in Fall 2011. He studies electron transport in nanostructures. Office: MRC 130A Email: guand@rpi.edu
		Christopher P. Mulligan Visiting Scientist
		Chris Mulligan joined our group as a visiting scientist in 2009, while simultaneously holding a research staff position at Benet Laboratories. He also received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in our group (see below). His current interest is in various high-temperature solid lubricious coatings. Email: c.mulligan@us.army.mil
		Sarah Evans Undergraduate Student
		Sarah joined our group in spring 2011. She works on coatings for novel x-ray generation. Email: evanss4@rpi.edu
	HOME	Former Group Members (former members: please send updates/corrections to galld@rpi.edu)

		Jasmeet S. Chawla Ph.D. 2011
		Jasmeet joined our group in Fall 2007. His work focused on electron transport in nanoscale structures. He has joined the Intel Component Research Division. Email: jasmeetchawla@gmail.com
		Xunyuan Zhang Ph.D. 2011
		Xunyuan joined our group in Fall 2007. He studied the electronic structure of CrN by optical and electronic transport measurements. He has joined Global Foundries. Email: zhangx11@rpi.edu
			Srijit Mukherjee Ph.D. 2009
			Srijit Mukherjee joined our group in Spring 2007. He developed scaling relationship models for nanorod growth under extreme shadowing and at elevated temperature. He has joined Intel to work on interconnect deposition. Email: srijit.mukherjee@gmail.com
			Michael D. Gasda Ph.D. 2009
			Mike joined our group in Fall 2007. He has designed various new nanostructured electrodes for PEM fuel cells (patent pending). After his graduation, he has joined Bloom Energy to work on solid oxide Fuel Cells. Email: mikegasda@gmail.com
			Christopher P. Mulligan M.S. 2004, Ph.D. 2009
			Chris Mulligan joined our group in 2003, and obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees while simultaneously holding a research staff position at Benet Laboratories. His thesis research focused on CrN-Ag self-lubricating nanoporous hard-coatings. Chris continues to work at Benet Labs and also continues his collaboration with our group as a Visiting Scientist (see above) Email: c.mulligan@us.army.mil
			Jaya M. Purswani Ph.D. 2008
			Jaya Purswani joined our group in Fall 2004. She developed a method to grow atomically smooth single-crystal Cu layers, studied their surface morphology by in-site STM, and demonstrated specular electron scattering at their surfaces. Email: purswj@alum.rpi.edu
				Chunming Zhou Ph.D. 2007
				Chunming Zhou joined our group in Fall 2004. He developed novel self-assembled patterns by nanosphere lithography and used them to create nanorod arrays by glancing angle deposition. After his graduation, he joined Novellus Inc. as a process engineer. Email: Chunming.Zhou@NOVELLUS.com

			Sree RangaSai Kesapragada Ph.D. 2006
			Sai joined our group in Spring 2003. He developed various nanostructures by glancing angle deposition including branched nanorods and nano pressure sensors. After his Ph.D., he joined Novellus Inc. as a process engineer and then moved on to become a Product Manager at Applied Materials Inc. Email: skesapragada@gmail.com
			Trevor Keller M.S. 2011 Trevor joined our group in Fall 2009. He worked on nanostructured materials for inorganic thin film solar cells. He continued his Ph.D. studies with Prof. Lewis. Email: kellet@rpi.edu
			Kenneth Girardin B.S. 2006; M.S. 2009
			Ken joined our group in spring 2003. He developed various nanostructures including his famous nanocucumbers. Ken came back to our group in 2008 to finish his M.S. degree, working on 1-D nanostructure arrays. Email: griark@gmail.com
			Joanna Frederick-Lynch M.S. 2003
			Joanna is the first graduate student of our group. She built an ultra-high vacuum deposition system and studied surface morphology and nanostaircases in single crystal CrN layers. After her degree, she did some work in our group on hybrid carbon nanotube structures, then left to work for Picatinny Arsenal and then for Benet Laboratories as a research engineer. Email: jrladybug22@yahoo.com
				Donya Thomas Undergraduate Student
				Donya joined our group in spring 2011. She worked on the next generation of the “Materials Machine”. Email: thomad6@rpi.edu
					Marco Balducci B.S. 2011
					Marco joined our group in fall 2010. He worked on ZnMgO layers for solar cell applications. Email: baldum@rpi.edu
					Adam Bross B.S. 2011
					Adam joined our group in fall 2008. He worked on a quantitative micrograph analysis of metallic nanorod arrays and also developed a thin film growth simulator. Email: brossa@rpi.edu
			Eric Conway B.S. 2011 Eric joined our group in fall 2008. He worked on Ag-diffusion in hard coatings, for applications in high-temperature lubrication. Email: conwae2@rpi.edu
							Heather A. Bowman B.S. 2009
							Heather joined our group in fall 2007. She is the initial developer of a Thin Film Growth Simulator, using ping-pong balls as atoms, which will ultimately be used for K-5 educational outreach.
							Quinn P. McAllister B.S. 2008
							Quinn joined our group in Spring 2007. He utilized ultra-high vacuum magnetron sputtering to deposit nanocomposite coatings and developed a new vacuum sample storage system. After his B.S., he joined the graduate program at the University of Delaware. Email: mcallq@UDel.Edu
						Evan J. Laprade B.S. 2008
						Evan joined our group in Spring 2007. He has designed and built various power supply support structures for thin film deposition. After receiving his B.S. degree, he joined the Ph.D. program in Materials Science at Northwestern University. Email: evanlaprade2012@u.northwestern.edu
			Siddharth P. Pathi B.S. 2007
			Siddharth joined our group in fall 2005. He used reactive magnetron co-suputtering to develop multi-layer lubricious coatings. After his degree, he joined the Ph.D. program at Cornell University. Email: spp35@cornell.edu
			Nicholas Dolisky B.S. 2006
			Nick joined our group in fall 2004. He was utilizing in-situ scanning tunneling microscopy to study graphite surfaces and was designing and testing a rod-fed e-beam evaporator. After his degree, he joined the Franklin Pierce Law Center law-school. Email: ndolinsky@piercelaw.edu
		Add picture	Joseph Riendeau B.S. 2006
			Joe joined our group in fall 2003. He developed a method for cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy sample preparation. He joined the graduate program in mechanical engineering at RPI. Email: riendj@rpi.edu
							Sun Kyu Kim Visiting Professor, 2008
							Sun Kyu Kim has joined our group to work on novel concepts of hard coatings. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Utah in 1981 and held industrial positions at Exxon and Kia Motors Co. He currently holds a professor position at the University of Ulsan in Korea, working on superhard nanocomposites, aqueous corrosion resistant coatings, high temperature oxidation resistant thin films, and biomaterials. Email: skim@ulsan.ac.kr
			Jitendra Singh Visiting Professor, 2007
			Prof. Singh has visited our group in the summer of 2007. He has developed various experimental skills in our laboratory, including measuring the heat transport between nanorod layers and air, and doing tunneling spectroscopy on single crystal CrN surfaces. JP is a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. Email: jpsingh@physics.iitd.ac.in
							Qing Zhao Graduate Student, 2008
							Qing joined our group in Fall 2007. His research focused on the deposition of BTO-based nanostructured composite layers with extreme stiffness. He left the group to continue his graduate studies with Prof. L. Huang at RPI. Email: zhaoq2@rpi.edu
			Xiao Zhao Summer Student, 2007
			Xiao has joined our group as a summer student in 2007. She has grown Ti nanorod arrays which will be used as electrodes in organic solar cells. She is a student at Smith College. Email: xmzhao@email.smith.edu
			Lori Hutcherson Summer student 2003
			Lori did research in our group over the summer of 2003. She developed a novel patterning technique using anisotropic etching. After her B.S. from UMBC, she joined the Louisiana State University's MD/PhD program. Email: hutch1@umbc.edu