People

Nabila Tanjeem

Assistant Professor, California State University, Fullerton.

Postdoc, University of Colorado, Boulder. (2020-2022)

Ph.D., Applied Physics, Harvard University, 2020.

B.Sc., Electrical Engineering, the University of Tokyo, 2013.

Julianna Betancourt

Julianna is an undergraduate student from the Mechanical Engineering department, studying light-driven crystal formation.

Elijah Gibson

Elijah is an undergraduate from the Physics department, currently working on crystal growth under patterned light illumination.

Arlene Heredia

Arlene is a Physics major studying how to make different shapes using colloidal particle assemblies.

Michael Agreda

Michael is a Physics major, studying the light-induced shapeshifting behavior of microgel assemblies.

Austin Nguyen

Austin is an M.S. student from the Computer Science department, working on molecular dynamic simulation of active self-assembly.

Gargi Mansingh

Gargi received her M.S. in Physics from the Physics department in 2025. She studied the dynamics of photothermally assembled colloidal crystals. She was the recipient of the Dan Black Fellowship. She is a co-author of our JPC article and is interested in pursuing a career in Physics research.

Stephen Smith

Stephen earned his M.S. degree from the Department of Physics in 2025. He developed a method of synthesizing shapeshifting liquid droplets using gold nanoparticle-hydrogel composites. He is now working as a lecturer at Cal Poly Pomona!

SK Tahmid Shahriar

Tahmid finished his M.S. degree from the Mechanical Engineering department in 2024. He performed experiments on binary colloidal self-assembly and became the first author of an article published in Soft Matter! He is now pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests revolve around exploring next-generation materials for sustainable engineering and their potential to contribute to human welfare.

Jose Lopez-Ceja

Jose graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree in 2025. He studied how to make colloidal-scale robots using light-driven self-assembly. He received the UROC Fellowship and did a summer internship at NASA! He is the first author of an article published in JPC B. He was featured on CSUF News for his excellent contribution to research.

Vanessa Flores

Vanessa graduated from the Mechanical Engineering department in 2025. She studied how differently charged particles assemble in photothermal convection. Her work was published in JPC B!

Sean Machler

Sean graduated with a B.Sc in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Physics in 2023. He developed computational tools for analyzing microscope images of colloidal crystals. He became a co-author of two peer-reviewed articles published by our group.

Shirlaine Juliano

Shirlaine graduated from the Biology department in 2023. She worked on the synthesis of gold nanoparticles and the light-responsive behavior of amphiphiles. She co-authored an article with our group. She is working as a research fellow at the University of San Diego.

Ji Woo (Grace) Kim

Grace was a premedical student. She performed experiments to study the photothermal response of microgel particles.

Christopher Feltman

Chris was an undergraduate mathematics student. He studied the self-assembly of binary mixtures using molecular dynamics simulations; his work resulted in a peer-reviewed paper on Soft Matter!

Tracy Yang

Tracy was a student from Troy High School who did a summer internship with us. She applied machine learning to track particles from bright-field images. She is heading to the University of California, Berkeley, for her undergraduate degree!

Hugo Lopez

Hugo was a Mechanical Engineering major, applied Python-based analysis to quantify the growth of colloidal assemblies

Omya Srivastava

Omya is a summer intern from Troy High School. She studied the impact of thermophoresis on light-driven assemblies.

Daghan Balli

Daghan is a summer intern from Troy High School. He worked on gold nanoparticle synthesis and light-driven assemblies.