News

2022 a good year for MNFTL. Our students and postdocs presented papers at the APS March Meeting in Chicago, the APS DFD Meeting in Indianapolis, and IEEE’s iTherm Meeting in San Diego. We published several journal papers, see Publications listing in MNFTL’s homepage. After completing his PhD, George Damoulakis joined nLight in Vancouver, Washington. Mohamad Jafari Gukeh also earned his PhD, and now works at Amica Systems in San Diego, California. Shashwata Moitra and Sreya Sarkar successfully passed their PhD preliminary exams. Harshad Gaikwad (postdoc) has left MNFTL to start a Humboldt Research Fellowship at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. Francesco Bellussi (visiting PhD student from Politecnico di Torino, Italy) has returned to his home base to complete his PhD dissertation. Anish Pal joined MNFTL (from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India) as a PhD student. Among past MNFTL graduates, there were many promotions and advancements, most notably, Tom Schutzius (2013 PhD) moved to U. California Berkeley as Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering, and Uddalok Sen (2019 PhD) to Wageningen University in The Netherlands, also as Assistant Professor. Joseph Mates (2014 PhD) is Senior Program Manager at Aerojet-Rocketdyne in Huntsville, Alabama. Theodore Koukoravas (2019 PhD) joined Johnson & Johnson in Jacksonville, Florida.

December 11, 2021: George received his PhD degree in UIC graduation ceremony. He will be joining nLight in Vancouver, Washington, as Process and Development Engineer starting on Jan. 3, 2022. We are so proud of you George!

October 21, 2021: Dr. Megaridis delivered a virtual seminar titled “Surface Wettability Engineering: From Microfluidics to Energy Applications and Beyond” at the Micro Nano Bio-Fluidics Group, IIT Madras, India.

October 19, 2021: George Damoulakis successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Surface Engineering in Heat-Transfer Applications.” Congratulations George!

August 4, 2021: George’s paper titled “A Wickless Paradigm for High-Performance Vapor-Chamber Heat Spreaders” selected Best Paper at 8^th International Conference on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow (HTFF’21), Virtual, August 2– 4, 2021.

December 15, 2020: New patent issued based on MNFTL work “Low-Fluorine Compositions with Cellulose for Generating Superhydrophobic Surfaces,” U.S. Patent 10,865,317. Thank you Kimberly-Clark for the support!

June 2020: Tamal Roy has completed his postdoc study at MNFTL and is moving to Switzerland, where he will assume his new post as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Dimos Poulikakos’s Laboratory of Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies at ETH-Zurich. Congratulations Tamal!

January 14, 2020: New patent issued based on MNFTL work “Non-Fluorinated Water-Based Superhydrophobic Compositions,” U.S. Patent 10,533,096. Thank you Kimberly-Clark for the support!

October 8, 2019: Jared Morrissette has successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Composite Coatings for Liquid Repellency: From Formulations to Applications.” Congratulations Jared!

October 2019: Reza Ghodsi has joined Dr. Slobodan Todorovic‘s group at the University of Colorado School of Medicine (Aurora, CO) as a postdoctoral research fellow. Congratulations Reza, we will miss you!

September 25, 2019: Dr. Megaridis delivered an invited lecture titled “Wettability-Patterned Surfaces for Pumpless Handling of Fluid Microvolumes: Lab-on-Chip and Heat Transfer Applications” at the 45th International Conference on Micro & Nano Engineering in Rhodes, Greece.

July 24, 2019: Theodore Koukoravas successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Surface-Energy Patterning of Metals for High-Demand, Energy-Efficient, mm-Scale Cooling Applications.” Congratulations Theodore!

June 2019: Uddalok Sen has accepted a postdoc position to join the Physics of Fluids Group at the University of Twente (Netherlands), where he will be starting later this month. Congratulations Uddalok!

May 10, 2019: Jacopo Bernardini and Hélène Della Monica of the UIC-PoliTo (Politecnico di Torino) dual-degree program successfully defended their MS theses and are heading back to Italy to complete their degrees there. Congratulations Jacopo and Hélène!

March 18, 2019: Dr. Megaridis delivered the inaugural lecture in a new TED-style talk series intended to document career and life reflections of newly-appointed UIC Engineering Distinguished Professors.

March 18, 2019: Reza Ghodsi successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Graphene Liquid Cell Transmission Electron Microscopy Investigation of Confined Liquids.” Congratulations Reza!

March 12, 2019: Uddalok Sen successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Manipulating Liquid Volumes by Wettability-Patterned Substrates.” Congratulations Uddalok!

January 2019: MNFTL alumna Jie Zhang (1995 PhD) appointed Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China. Congratulations Jie!

December 2018: Ali N. Ibrahim successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Water Transport over and through a Thin Permeable Medium with Wettability Contrast,” and left MNFTL to assume his new post as Assistant Professor at the University of Babylon, Iraq. Congratulations Ali!

November 2018: MNFTL members present 7 papers at the 71st Annual APS DFD Meeting in Atlanta.

October 2018: MNFTL alum Manish Tiwari (2009 PhD) has been promoted to Professor at University College London, UK. We are so proud of you Manish!

August 2018: Dr. Megaridis appointed UIC Distinguished Professor, an honor bestowed only to a handful of UIC faculty each year.

June 25, 2018: New NSF grant received! ” A Bottom-up Framework for the Nanoscale Origins of Ice Formation and Adhesion on Structured Surfaces.” PI: Dr. Megaridis; Co-PI’s: Drs. S. Anand and T. Shokuhfar. Sponsor: National Science Foundation, Amount: $335,242, Period: July 2018 – June 2021. This program generates science-based guidelines for optimal anti-icing performance. The methodology employs graphene liquid cells (GLCs) with encapsulated nanoparticles of varying wettabilities and sizes. The research, by generating high-quality experimental data for a spatial regime of multiphase transport that has been inaccessible by existing instrumentation, opens new horizons for validating and advancing models simulating nanometer-scale multiphase systems.

June 2018: MNFTL alum Arindam Das (2013 PhD) has been appointed Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Goa, India. Congratulations Arindam!

May 13, 2018: Congratulations to MNFTL’s 2018 graduates: Aritra Ghosh (PhD), Mohamed Elsharkawy (PhD), Luca Bellora (MS), Patrick Carroll (MS) and John Palumbo (MS).

April 18, 2018: Uddalok Sen receives UIC Dean’s Scholar Award. This is the most distinguished award that UIC offers to graduate students. Those chosen are considered most likely to make outstanding contributions to their University and their fields of learning. Congratulations Uddalok!

April 3, 2018: Undergraduate researcher Kayla Storme (UIC Biochem BS 2018) receives NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The highly-competitive program supports high-potential, early-career scientists and engineers towards their graduate research training in STEM field. Congratulations Kayla!

Mar 1, 2018: Research grant received! “Materials, Product Development and Nanotechnology (MAPRONANO) Africa Center of Excellence”. Sponsor: World Bank (via Makerere University, Uganda), Amount: $325,000 (UIC Share of $6M total), Period: Mar 2018 – Jul 2022. The MAPRONANO African Center of Excellence (ACE) based in Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, focuses on enhancinng materials and product development through value addition. The Center develops nanotechnology solutions to problems in the areas of energy, water, the envuironment and medicine. UIC will serve as host site for up to 4 PhD students from the Center. These students will spend extended periods of time in Ys 2 and 3 of the program working with Dr Megaridis and his students/postdocs in areas focusing on microfluidics and medical diagnostics.

Feb 1, 2018: Research grant received! “Rapid 3D transport of liquid in porous substrates”. Sponsor: Kimberly-Clark, Amount: $143,314, Period: Feb 1, 2018 – Jan 31, 2019. This research program is developing strategies and identifying the bounds for rapid tranport of liquids on the surface of and absorption inside porous substrates. The program builds on MNFTL’s demonstrated capability to transport liquids pumplessly at high rates. This critical capability provides the foundation for attaining high liquid-absorption rates with long-term goal to assist the design of next-generation incontinence products.

Feb 1, 2018: Research grant received! “Fluorine-free hydrophobic formulations for nonwoven substrates”. Sponsor: Kimberly-Clark, Amount: $84,773, Period: Feb 1, 2018-Jan 31, 2019. This research program aims to develop water-based, fluorine-free, superhydrophobic coating formulations, which can impart super-repellency to fibrous substrates. The current state of the research assures that such coatings can be applied to impart repellency to flat, impermeable substrates. The focus of the work forward is to do the same for porous substrates that are inherently non-wettable.

October 31, 2017: Patent issued! J. Qin, D. E. Waldroup, C. M. Megaridis, T. M. Schutzius and I. S. Bayer, “Non-Fluorinated Water-Based Superhydrophobic Surfaces,” U. S. Patent 9,803,100.

October 5, 2017: Aritra Ghosh receives a UIC Dean’s Scholar Award. This is the most distinguished award that UIC offers to graduate students. Those chosen are considered most likely to make outstanding contributions to their University and their fields of learning. Congratulations Aritra!

August 1, 2017: Research grant received! “EAGER: Exploratory Natural Models for Fog Harvesting”. Sponsor: NSF, Amount: $138,000, Period: Aug 1, 2017 – July 31, 2019. This study focuses on the physical mechanisms that allow a beetle to collect water droplets from the atmosphere, and quantify water collection rates as a function of the incoming fog stream conditions. Fundamental knowledge in this area is necessary because of its relevance to engineering systems that use either physical capture (nets, screens, etc.) or phase change (condensation) to extract water from the atmosphere. The research is of interest not only to the thermal transport community, but also to the wider communities of biomimetics. The impact of this study may transcend interdisciplinary boundaries and has the potential to maximize fundamental knowledge of immense technological importance.

April 4, 2017: Dr. Pallab Sinha Mahapatra (MNFTL postdoc 2014-16) appointed Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Well done Pallab!

May 1, 2017: Research grant received! “Fundamental Studies on Functionalizing Metallic Surfaces with Applications to Enhanced Heat Transfer”. Sponsor: Office of Naval Research (via NSRI at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Amount $230,631 (UIC share of $874,884 total), Period: May 2017 – Nov 2019. The overall goal of this collaborative program is to remove high rates of heat (> 1 kW/sqcm) from microscale hot spots. Femto-second laser processed metal surfaces that are fabricated at UNL combine the advantage of high thermal conductivity of metals with the ability to precisely pattern wettable and non-wettable domains on the substrates. The UIC program involves heat removal by phase change and heat rejection by condensing water vapor on a cooled surface. The approach relies on metal surfaces, which are best suited for heat transfer application.

June 14, 2016: Patent issued! J. Qin, D. E. Waldroup, C. M. Megaridis, T. Schutzius and I. S. Bayer, “Superhydrophobic Surfaces,” U. S. Patent 9,364,859.

March 30, 2016: Uddalok Sen receives prestigious Faydor Litvin Graduate Award for new students. The Litvin Awards are given in honor of Distinguished Professor Emeritus Faydor Litvin in recognition of the student’s academic achievement and scholarly promise. Congratulations Uddalok!

January 10, 2016: Prof. Lihong Yang has joined our lab from Shanghai Univ. Sci. Tech., China, as sabbatical visitor. Dr. Yang will be working on durable superoleophobic surfaces.

December 22, 2015: Patent issued! C. M. Megaridis, T. M. Schutzius, I. S. Bayer and J. Qin, “Superhydrophobic Compositions,” U. S. Patent 9,217,094.

December 21, 2015: Joseph Mates’s PhD Dissertation titled “Tunable Multifunctional Nanomaterial & Polymer Composites: Nonwoven Applications” was selected as the UIC Outstanding Thesis for 2015-2016 in the division of Engineering, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences. Congratulations Joseph! Joseph is currently with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Edwards Air Force Base in California. Please use Joseph’s attach photo for this announcement.

September 22, 2015: Patent received! C. M. Megaridis, T. M. Schutzius and I. S. Bayer, “Method for Preparing Micro-Patterned Superhydro-phobic/Superhydrophilic Coatings,” U. S. Patent 9,139,739.

May 20, 2015: Dr. Megaridis wins UIC Inventor of the Year Award, which is awarded each year to a UIC faculty member who has developed a groundbreaking invention.

May 15, 2015: Joseph Mates’s paper “PVDF Multifunctional Microfiber Spunbond Nonwovens” won the Technical Merit Award at the Industrial Advisory Board Meeting of the Nonwovens Institute at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Congratulations Joseph!

May 4, 2015: Souvick Chatterjee receives prestigious Faydor Litvin Graduate Award for incoming students. The Litvin Awards are given in honor of Distinguished Professor Emeritus Faydor Litvin in recognition of the student’s academic achievement and scholarly promise. Congratulations Souvick!

April 15, 2015: Joseph Mates wins prestigious NRC Postdoc Fellowship to work at Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Edwards Air Force Base in California. Congratulations Joseph!

December 2014: Tom Schutzius’s PhD Dissertation titled “Large-area Coating and Patterning of Functional Nanocomposites: Design, Synthesis and Characterization” was selected as the UIC Outstanding Thesis for 2014-2015 in the division of Engineering, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences. Congratulations Tom! Tom is currently a postdoctoral fellow at ETH-Zurich in Switzerland.

November 20, 2014: Joseph Mates successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled “Tunable Multifunctional Nanomaterial and Polymer Composites: Nonwoven Applications.” Congratulations Joseph!

October 14, 2014: Joseph Mates wins first place in the student poster competition of the Fall Conference of the American Filtration & Separations (AFS) Society that took place in Chicago. Joseph’s winning entry was titled “The Fluid Diode: Tunable Unidirectional Flow through Porous Media.” Congratulations Joseph!

July 2014: Dr. Megaridis is featured in a story on the National Science Foundation web site.

February 2014: Shreyas Kapatral defended his MS thesis in December and has accepted a full time position at Chrysler. Congratulations Shreyas!”

September 16, 2013: Jinlong Song has joined our lab from Dalian University of Technology, China. Jinlong is pursuing his PhD at DUT, and earned a China Scholarship Council award to spend one year in Chicago, performing research in the MNFTL. He will be working on superoleophobic surfaces.

August 2013: Zachariah Rabatah, Jared Morrissette and Alejandro Vera receive separate Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Awards for the 2013-14 academic year. Congratulations Zach, Jared and Alex!

June 2013: NSF awards new grant to MNFTL to study atmospheric water capture using advanced
nanomaterials. The STTR Phase I study is pursued in collaboration with NBD Nanotechnologies, and is for a period of one year.

June 11, 2013: Tom Schutzius receives prestigious Fellowship to pursue postdoctoral research at ETH-Zurich in Switzerland. Congratulations Tom!

May 9, 2013: Tom Schutzius receives the UIC Undergraduate Mentoring Award for Graduate Students. This new award recognizes the invaluable time, effort, expertise, and concern that some UIC Graduate Students dedicate to mentoring undergraduate students in classroom, research, and other academic settings. Tom was one of only six inaugural winners of this award offered by The Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs, the Honors College, and the Graduate College. Congratulations Tom!

April 29, 2013: Tom Schutzius receives a UIC Dean’s Scholar Award. This is the most distinguished award that UIC offers to graduate students. Those chosen are considered most likely to make outstanding contributions to their University and their fields of learning. Congratulations Tom!

April 26, 2013: Mohamed Elsharkawy receives prestigious Faydor Litvin Graduate Award for incoming students. The Litvin Awards are given in honor of Distinguished Professor Emeritus Faydor Litvin in recognition of the student’s academic achievement and scholarly promise. Congratulations Mohamed!

April 23, 2013: Dr. Megaridis is a panelist at the International Workshop on Micro and Nano Structures for Phase Change Heat Transfer, taking place at the MIT Endicott House in Dedham, MA.

April 16, 2013: Mohamed Elsharkawy’s poster titled “Ink-Jet Patterned Superhydrophobic Paper as a Platform for Point-of-Care Diagnostic Devices” wins first place (undergraduate) in the Engineering/Physical Sciences Section of the UIC Student Research Forum. A total of 291 students participated in this event. Congratulations Mohamed!

March 29, 2013: Mohamed Elsharkawy has been selected to receive a 2013 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Fellowship. Selections for this prestigious national award is based on the student’s outstanding abilities and accomplishments, as well as the student’s potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the US science and engineering enterprise [read more]. Mohamed will be graduating from UIC this May with a BS in Physics, and minors in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering. He will be starting his PhD work in our lab this fall. Congratulations Mohamed!

August 2012: NSF awards new grant to MNFTL to study micropatterned coatings for superior boiling heat transfer performance. The study is pursued in collaboration with Iowa State University, and is for a period of three years.

August 21, 2012: Dr. Megaridis presents an invited paper titled “Multifunctional Nanocomposite Liquid-Repellent Coatings/Films for the Electronics Industry” at the IPC Midwest Conference and Exhibition, Schaumburg, Illinois, August 21-22, 2012.

August 1, 2012: Gustav Graeber has joined our lab after earning his BS in Mechanical Engineering from The Technical University of Berlin, Germany. Gustav will spend two months in Chicago, under a DAAD-RISE internship award supporting his research in the MNFTL. He will be working on droplet impact on surfaces with patterned wettability.

June 2012: Dr. Megaridis is named University Scholar. The University Scholars program was designed to identify outstanding faculty in the University of Illinois system who are among the very best in their fields. This award, in addition to its prestige, offers support to the recipient’s scholarly work for a period of three years.

April 2012: Aritra Ghosh receives prestigious Faydor Litvin Graduate Award for incoming students. The Litvin Awards are given in honor of Distinguished Professor Emeritus Faydor Litvin in recognition of the student’s academic achievement and scholarly promise. Congratulations Aritra!

April 2012: Tom Schutzius receives prestigious Faydor Litvin Graduate Award for continuing students. The Litvin Awards are given in honor of Distinguished Professor Emeritus Faydor Litvin in recognition of the student’s academic achievement and service to the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and its graduate student community. Congratulations Tom!

March-July 2012: Dr. Anjana Jain, of the National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore, India visits our laboratory after winning a prestigious Raman Fellowship. Such research fellowships are granted by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to Indian scientists with exceptional academic qualifications, research experience and commendable contribution to research/innovation at the international level.

October 2011: Dr. Megaridis elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). Election to APS Fellowship is limited to no more than 0.5% of the membership and reflects recognition by one’s peers of one’s outstanding contributions to physics. The citation for Dr. Megaridis reads
as follows: “For pioneering the development of thermophoretic sampling, as well as contributions to the fluid dynamics of droplet impact and the behavior of fluids in nanoenclosures.” For more details, click here

Aug. 2011-Aug. 2012: Dr. Muhammad Raffi, senior researcher at the Plasma Research and Application Labs, PINST, Islamabad, Pakistan visits our laboratory after winning a prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award. The Fulbright Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, is the U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program and is supported by the people of the United States and partner countries around the world. During his one-year fellowship at UIC, Dr. Raffi will work on nanoparticle encapsulation in carbon nanofibers targetted for use in novel engineering or biomedical applications.

May 2011: NSF awards new grant to MNFTL to study icephobic coatings.

July 2009: Dr. Megaridis co-organizes Minisymposium titled “Fluid Dynamics at Super-Repellent Surfaces” at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the American Physical Society (APS). For more details, click here

July 2009: Dr. Megaridis co-organizes Minisymposium titled “Fluid Dynamics at Super-Repellent Surfaces” at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the American Physical Society (APS). For more details, click here

July 16, 2009: Manish K. Tiwari successfully defends PhD dissertation titled “Functional Nanocomposites and Dispersions: Synthesis, Characterization and Performance Evaluation.” This August, Manish will be moving to Switzerland where he will join Prof. Poulikakos’ group at ETH-Zurich as a postdoctoral researcher. Congratulations Manish!

November 2008: Our article I.S. Bayer, M.K. Tiwari and C.M. Megaridis, “Biocompatible poly(vinylidene fluoride)/cyanoacrylate composite coatings with tunable hydrophobicity and bonding strength,” Applied Physics Letters 93, 173902, 2008 received unsolicited coverage by the November 1, 2008 issue of the Virtual Journal of Biological Physics Research

August 15, 2008: Our paper “Fine-Line Conductor Manufacturing Using Advanced Drop-On-Demand PZT Printing Technology,” J. B. Szczech, C. M. Megaridis, D. R. Gamota and J. Zhang, IEEE Transactions on Electronics Packaging Manufacturing 25, 26-33 (2002) has been selected by the Illinois Engineering Council as one of its four 2008 Engineering Achievement Award winners. John Szczech and Jie Zhang both received their PhD in the MNFTL and are presently with Motorola Labs.

May 1, 2008: Manish K. Tiwari wins prestigious UIC award for 2008-09. The Dean’s Scholar Award is presented by the Dean of the Graduate College in recognition of a student’s scholarly achievement. It is intended to provide the most distinguished, advanced-level graduate students with a period of time dedicated solely to the completion of their programs.

Congratulations Manish!