Principal Investigator:
Assist. Prof. Dr. Maria Ibáñez
Maria Ibáñez was born in La Sénia (Spain). She graduated in physics at the University of Barcelona, where she also obtained her PhD in 2013. Her PhD thesis was qualified Excellent Cum Laude and awarded with the Honors Doctorate by the University of Barcelona. Her PhD research was funded by a Spanish competitive grant (FPU) which supported her to conduct short-term research stays in cutting-edge laboratories. In particular, she worked at CEA Grenoble (2009), the University of Chicago (2010), the California Institute of Technology (2011), the Cornell University (2012) and the Northwestern University (2013). In 2014, she joined the group of Prof. Dr. Kovalenko at ETH Zürich and EMPA as a research fellow where in 2017 she received the Ružička Prize. In September 2018 she became an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) at IST Austria and started the Functional Nanomaterials group.
Office: I23.O2.012
E-mail: mibanez@ist.ac.at
Phone: +43 664 7935557
Project Technician:
Magali was born in France. She first studied Chemical Engineering at the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Lille in her native France. She received her PhD in Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry in 2007. She then worked as a postdoctoral research associate in the group of Nicholas J. Westwood at St. Andrews University, U. K. then at the Institute of Organic and Analytical Chemistry at the University of Orléans, France. She has experience in heterocyclic and medicinal chemistry as well as in multistep synthesis. She then joined, in 2016, the company Greenpharma in Orléans, France as a medicinal chemistry manager to develop hemisynthesis and bioisosteres of natural compounds scaffolds. She joined the Ibáñez group in November 2020 as a project technician.
Office: I23.O2.008
E-mail: magali.lorion@ist.ac.at
Phone: +43 (0)2243 9000-2117
PostDocs:
Dr. Cheng Chang
Cheng Chang was born in China in 1992. He received his BE degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Beihang University in 2014. He joined Li-Dong Zhao’s group in 2014 as a Master’s student and received his Ph.D. degree in July 2019. In October 2019 he joined the Ibáñez group as a postdoc. His research focuses on bottom-up engineering of tin chalcogenide for thermoelectric applications.
E-mail: sharona.horta@ist.ac.at
Shengduo Xu was born in China. He received his BE degree and Master degree in Energy Science and Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology. He went to the University of Queensland in Australia and joined Zhigang Chen’s group in October 2017 as a Ph.D. student, and received his Ph.D. degree in November 2021. In April 2022 he joined the Ibáñez group as a postdoc. He is currently working on flexible thermoelectric materials and devices, and miniaturization of thermoelectric coolers.
E-mail: shengduo.xu@ist.ac.at
Andreu Bonet Navarro
Andreu Bonet Navarro was born in 1995 in Deltebre, Spain. He obtained a B.AS in Chemistry at Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) in Tarragona, where he developed a project focused on crystallography. Then he pursued an M.SC in Nanotechnology at the same university in 2017-2018, in collaboration with FiCMA research group, where he kept working on material science and nanotechnology. Afterwards, he started to be interested in renewable energies and embarked on a doctoral thesis in Eurecat Technological center of Catalonia in collaboration with MEMTEC group in URV where he was working on electroreduction of atmospheric CO2 for fuel cell batteries applications from 2018 to 2021. During his PhD studies he automatized his experiments to increase data production, repeatability, and quality. While doing that, he got passionate about automatization and realized that we would need that tool to increase work efficiency and production, particularly in science, but also in many other fields, to accelerate the green transition. After his PhD, he remained one extra year in Eurecat, collaborating with people from different fields to automatize chemical processes. Finally, in 2022 he joined the Ibáñez group, where he will be building a high-throughput setup for the discovery of thermoelectric materials.
Office: I23.O2.007
E-mail: andreu.bonetnavarro@ist.ac.at
Phone: +43 (0)2243 9000-2117
PhD Students:
Mariano Calcabrini
Mariano Calcabrini was born in Quilmes, Argentina. He graduated in Chemical Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires in 2017. During his Master he worked in sol-gel processing of silica gels and nanoparticles. In March 2019 he joined Ibáñez’s group as a PhD candidate studying thin film thermoelectrics and surface chemistry.
Office: I23.O2.007
E-mail: mariano.calcabrini@ist.ac.at
Phone: +43 (0)2243 9000-2117
Tobias Kleinhanns
Tobias Kleinhanns was born in Nuremberg, Germany. He graduated in Materials Science from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. In 2019, he received a master’s degree also in Materials Science from the University of Stuttgart. During his Master’s thesis he worked on the synthesis and characterization of heterostructured nanowires. Subsequently, he joined the graduate school of the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria as a Ph.D candidate and affiliated with the Ibañez group in June 2020.
Office: I23.O2.008
E-mail: tobias.kleinhanns@ist.ac.at
Phone: +43 (0)2243 9000-2117
Seungho Lee
Seungho Lee was born in South Korea. He graduated in Material Science and Engineering from Kookmin University. He received a master’s degree in Energy Science and Engineering from Daegu Kyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) in 2016. The topic was the synthesis and characterization of nanocrystals for energy devices. In April 2019 he joined the Ibáñez group. His research focuses on the synthesis and characterisation of colloidal heteronanostructures.
Office: I23.O2.008
E-mail: seungho.lee@ist.ac.at
Phone: +43 (0)2243 9000-2117
Christine Fiedler
Christine Fiedler was born in Barbados and is also Austrian. She graduated in 2016 from the University of the West Indies Cave Hill, Barbados, with First Class Honours in Chemistry with Biochemistry. She received her master’s degree in 2020 from the Johannes Kepler University in Linz Austria in Polymer Chemistry. Her work focused on the synthesis and engineering of Janus micro/nanomotors and nanoparticle synthesis. Christine started her PhD studies in September 2020 and joined the Ibañez group to work on the processing of thermoelectric materials by solution methods.
Office: I23.O2.007
E-mail: christine.fiedler@ist.ac.at
Phone: +43 (0)2243 9000-2117
Predoctoral Visiting Scientific
Abid Raza
Abid Raza was born in Sahiwal, Pakistan. He received his B.S. degree in electronics engineering in 2012 from COMSATS University Islamabad, Abbottabad Campus, Pakistan and his M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan in 2014, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Fahad Mumtaz Malik. His research focuses on nonlinear robust control and observer design for different applications in the field of engineering science. Abid joined the Ibáñez group in February 2022 as a Predoctoral Visiting Scientist. During the following years, he will help to develop our setup for the high throughput discovery of thermoelectric materials.
Office: I23.O2.005
E-mail: abidraza8@gmail.com
Phone: +43 (0)2243 9000-2117
PhD Visiting Student
Ke Xiao
Ke Xiao is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Barcelona under the supervision of Prof. Andreu Cabot from the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC) in Spain. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering in China at the University of Geosciences (Beijing) in 2016. Then he received there his master’s degree in 2019. In June 2022, he joined Prof.Maria Ibáñez’s group as a visiting student, where he will be working on producing thermoelectric devices from solution-processed materials and testing their efficiency.
Office: I23.O2.005
E-mail: ke.xiao@ist.ac.at
Phone: +43 (0)2243 9000-2117
Scientific interns:
Aiswarya Rayaroth Puthiyaveettil
Aiswarya was born in India. She received her Master’s degree in Nanoscience and Technology from Bangalore University. Her thesis was titled “Flexible UV sensors based on MoS2 nanostructures”. Later, she completed her Post Graduate Diploma in Material Science from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), India, where she worked on developing organic-inorganic phosphorescent hybrids via a supramolecular approach. Aiswarya joined the Ibáñez group in February 2022 as a scientific intern and will work with Daniel studying transport in nanocrystal thin films.
Office: I23.O2.005
E-mail: aisha.uraj@ist.ac.at
Phone: +43 (0)2243 9000-2117
Vladyslav Kovtunovych
Vladyslav Kovtunovych was born in Ukraine. He is a fourth-year undergraduate student in Applied Physics and Nanomaterials at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in the Educational and Scientific Institute of High Technologies. During his studies, he has attended the international conferences NANO-2021 and School-conference of young scientists “Modern material science: physics, chemistry, technology with his project “Model of a system of nanostructured plates covered by a magnetically sensitive coating”. In addition, he worked at Chuico’s Institute of Surface Chemistry on the concentration dependence of the absorption spectrum of colloidal solutions. He joined the Ibáñez group in July 2022 as a scientific intern.
Office: I23.O2.008
E-mail: vladyslav.kovtunovych@ist.ac.at
Phone: +43 (0)2243 9000-2117
Former members:
| Name | Year | Position in the group | Current position |
| Marian Janik | 2019 | Rotation Student | PhD student in Katsaros Group (IST) |
| Yu Zhang | 2019 | Visiting Student | PhD student at IREC |
| Wei Tan | 2019 | Summer Intern | Bachelor student at Imperial College |
| Guillem Montaña Mora | 2019 | Visiting Student | PhD student in IREC |
| Doğukan Hazar Apaydın | 2019-2020 | Postdoc | Postdoc TU Wien |
| Juan Carlos Sobarzo Ponce |
2019 |
Rotation Student | PhD student in Waitukaitis Group (IST) |
| Maximilian Ritter | 2020 | Summer Intern | PhD student at ETH Zurich |
| Anna-Maria Fuchsberger | 2020 | Summer Intern | Student at TU Wien |
| Christoph Bartmann | 2020 | Summer Intern | Student at TU Wien |
|
Alwin Meledeth |
2020 | Master student | OMV company |
| Sajal Naduvile Thadathil | 2021 | Rotation Student | Rotation Student (IST) |
|
Shiva Safari |
2021 | Rotation Student | PhD student in Modic Group (IST) |
|
Soumyadip Mondal |
2021 | Rotation Student | PhD student in Freunberger Group (IST) |
|
Kemal Yorulmaz |
2021 | Intern | |
| Guillem Montaña Mora | 2021 | Visiting Student | PhD student in IREC |
| Anna Smirnova | 2021 | Scientific Intern | Bachelor student Duke University |
| Tanmoy Ghosh | 2021 | Postdoc | Postdoc at RWTH Aachen University |
| Yu Liu | 2019-2021 | Postdoc | PI at the Hefei University of Technology |
| Sergi Sànchez Ribot | 2021 | Scientific Intern | |
| Maryna Dryhailo | 2021 | Scientific Intern | Master (Italy) |
| Lorena Layana | 2021 | Rotation Student | Rotation Student (IST) |
| Bhargavi Pant | 2021 | Rotation Student | Rotation Student (IST) |
| Daniel Balazs | 2020-2022 | Postdoc | Staff Scientist (IST) |
| Marios Triantafyllou | 2021-2022 | Scientific intern | PhD student at the University of Crete |
| Prathamesh Patil | 2021-2022 | Scientific intern | Scientific intern (IST) |
| Maria Garcia Ramon | 2021-2022 | Scientific intern | Master at the Universidad del País Vasco (Spain) |