PI
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.
Before joining CSUF, Tanjeem worked on multiple experimental and computational projects involving self-assembly of colloidal particles and active motion of stimuli-responsive microstructures. Here is her Google Scholar page. As a graduate student, she worked as a teaching consultant and summer school instructor at Harvard University. She speaks Bengali and Japanese. Besides research and teaching, she enjoys nature walks, traveling to new places, and dancing.
Undergraduate students
Daniel Nasiby
Daniel is an undergraduate student from the Computer Engineering department, studying computer vision techniques for particle detection and tracking.
Graduate students
Julianna Betancourt
Julianna is a graduate student from the Mechanical Engineering department, studying light-driven crystal formation in binary particle systems.
Elijah Gibson
Elijah is currently pursuing his M.S. in the Physics department, studying how to design shape-programmable and reconfigurable assemblies under patterned light illumination.
Arlene Heredia
Arlene is a Physics major studying phase behavior of colloidal particles under nonequilibrium conditions.
Israt Khan
Israt is an M.S. student in Physics, studying the formation and nonequilibrium dynamics of polymer droplets.
Michael Agreda
Michael is a Physics major, studying the light-induced shape-shifting behavior of microgel assemblies.
Alumni
Austin Nguyen
Austin graduated with an M.S. in Computer Science. He developed molecular dynamics tools to understand particle assemblies and machine learning techniques to detect particles from noisy bright-field images. He is currently working at the U.S. Navy.
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.
