Outstanding referees
Here we acknowledge some of the outstanding referees that have reviewed manuscripts for Communications Materials.
While it is our opinion that these referees have gone above and beyond what is typically expected of a reviewer in terms of the value of their reports, the detail of their analysis, or the degree to which they have helped the authors improve their manuscripts prior to publication, we are no less grateful to the many more referees not named below. For every named referee there are countless more who have made similar contributions to the manuscripts which they reviewed. We are extremely grateful to everyone that has made the effort to review for us and has each contributed to the high quality of the papers published in Communications Materials.
April 2024 - Hyunseok Oh
Hyunseok Oh is an Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin – Madison. His group develops alloys, such as high-entropy alloys and steels, for extreme environments and sustainability. They use both experimental and computational methods to aid alloy design, including casting, thermomechanical processing, in situ microscopy, synchrotron, CALPHAD, and large language models.
March 2024 - Sina Jamalzadegan
Sina Jamalzadegan is a Ph.D. Candidate and Research Assistant in Chemical Engineering in the Wei Research Group at North Carolina State University. His research interests focus on point-of-care diagnostics, biosensor and wearable sensor fabrication, machine learning, biotechnology and agriculture. He explores innovations at the intersection of these fields to enhance healthcare, environmental monitoring, and agricultural efficiency.
February 2024 - Ulrike G.K. Wegst
Ulrike G.K. Wegst is a Professor at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on structure-property-processing correlations in bio-inspired and freeze-cast materials for biomedical and energy applications, with a particular focus on crystal growth dynamics and structure formation. With her outreach activities, she aims to enthuse science, engineering, and a circular economy by linking materials science with food science, sports, the arts, and music.
January 2024 - Erik Piatti
Erik Piatti is an Assistant Professor of Experimental Physics at Politecnico di Torino. His research focuses on the control of superconductivity and other quantum phases in advanced materials by means of electrostatic and electrochemical charge doping and on their characterization via electric transport, spectroscopy, and scanning probe microscopy.
December 2023 - Akiyoshi Yamada
Akiyoshi Yamada is a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Electro-Communications and a research fellow at the University of Tokyo. His research focuses on the theoretical investigation of transport phenomena and electron states in metals and semimetals at high magnetic fields. He is currently interested in strong spin-orbit-coupled systems in the quantum limit.
November 2023 - Jordan Baglo
Jordan Baglo is a Research Professional at the Institut Quantique of the Université de Sherbrooke. His current research focuses on thermal and electrical transport in strongly correlated electron systems, particularly at low temperatures and in high magnetic fields.
October 2023 - Felix Mayr
Felix Mayr is a final year PhD-student and research assistant at the Technical University of Munich. His research interests lie in the atomistic modeling of materials for catalysis and photovoltaic applications. He is currently interested in utilizing the rapid advances in Machine Learning for materials to better model real-world experiments in this area.
September 2023 - Luis González MacDowell
Luis G. MacDowell is a Professor of Chemical Physics at the Complutense University of Madrid. His research focuses on equilibrium and dynamical properties of interfaces, which he studies using theoretical models and computer simulations. His current interests are premelting phenomena, crystal growth theory, capillary waves and friction.
August 2023 - Widi Moestopo
Widi Moestopo is a postdoctoral researcher in the Materials Engineering Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His research focuses on understanding the mechanics of architected materials and developing responsive and high-resolution structures and devices for energy, space, and environmental applications.
July 2023 - Hyun Young Jung
Hyun Young Jung is an Associate Professor in the Department of Energy Engineering at Gyeongsang National University. His focus lies in the design of cutting-edge energy storage materials and innovative next-generation batteries to enhance rapid charging, fire resistance, and energy density for green mobilities.
June 2023 - Tito Busani
Tito Busani is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico. His research interests are in energy materials, atomic precision fabrication, opto-mechanic modulators and waveguides, machine learning applied to photovoltaic HIT cells and semiconductor processing, nano lasers, heterogenous integration into multi-functional devices for advancements in qubits and GHz communications.
May 2023 - Jaime Marian
Jaime Marian is a Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at UCLA. His research focuses on theory, modeling, and simulation of materials subjected to extreme conditions and chemical environments. His work applies to advanced structural material concepts for energy, aerospace, and additive manufacturing.
April 2023 - David Hall
David Hall is an Associate Professor in the Department of Energy and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Stavanger. His research focuses on interfacial electrochemistry for sustainable energy storage, including electrode-electrolyte interfaces in battery systems.
March 2023 - Debra Audus
Debra Audus is the Polymer Analytics Project Leader in the Materials Science and Engineering Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her research interests include improved machine learning for polymers, polymer databases, and the circular economy.
February 2023 - Hide Sakai
Hide Sakai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at Osaka University. His research is on designing and synthesizing new quantum materials that exhibit unconventional transport phenomena. He is currently interested in exploring strongly-correlated topological materials, such as magnetic and polar Dirac/Weyl metals and magnetic topological insulators.
January 2023 - Yujeong Bae
Yujeong Bae is a research professor and a group leader at the IBS Center for Quantum Nanoscience. Her research is on coherent control of quantum spin architectures built atom-by-atom on a surface. Using electron spin resonance combined with scanning tunneling microscopy, she aims to explore quantum phenomena in artificially built atomic structures, including single atoms, 1D chains, and 2D spin arrays.
December 2022 - Tony Day
Tony Day is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on the roles of glycosaminoglycan-protein interactions in inflammation and utilizes methodologies from structural biology to in vivo models. Tony’s current work aims to understand intrinsic anti-inflammatory and tissue-protective pathways and translate these towards the clinic.
November 2022 - Kazuki Sumida
Kazuki Sumida is a scientist at the Materials Sciences Research Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency. His research uses photoelectron spectroscopy to probe the electronic structure of functional materials, such as topological, low-dimensional, and magnetic materials.
October 2022 - Qing Tu
Qing Tu is an Assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at Texas A&M University. His research is on understanding the surface and interfacial properties of functional materials to address challenges facing our society. Current research topics include 2D materials, advanced scanning probe microscopy, and hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites.
September 2022 - Dan Congreve
Dan Congreve is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. His research group uses new optoelectronic materials to control light and energy at the nanoscale. By combining and structuring these materials, they aim to solve challenging applications, from next generation solar cells and light emitting diodes to new forms of bio-sensing and 3D printing.
August 2022 - Mirela Dragomir
Mirela Dragomir is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at the Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia and Assistant Professor at the Jožef Stefan International Postgraduate School. Her research focuses on the synthesis, crystal growth, and characterization of frustrated magnetic materials and unconventional superconductors. She is currently interested in the effects of high pressure on the structure and physical properties of these materials.
July 2022 - Julia Mundy
Julia Mundy is an Assistant Professor of physics and of applied physics at Harvard University. Her group’s work uses atomically-precise thin film deposition to construct new oxide quantum materials. She collaborated with PhD students Grace Pan and Dan Ferenc Segedin on her review.
June 2022 - Huiqiu Yuan
Huiqiu Yuan is a Professor of Physics and the Executive Deputy Director for the Center for Correlated Matter at Zhejiang University. His team studies emergent states in correlated electron systems using various methods, with a focus on exotic superconductivity, quantum phase transitions, correlated topological states and heavy fermions.
May 2022 - Joseph Dufouleur
Joseph Dufouleur is a scientist and group leader at the IFW Leibniz Institute in Dresden, Germany. His research mostly focuses on investigating quantum transport properties of emergent materials including topological materials, low dimensional superconductors, oxides and magnetic materials.
April 2022 - Eva Unger
Eva Unger holds positions at Helmholtz Center Berlin, Humboldt University Berlin and Lund University. Her team carries out research on solution-processable semiconductors, particualrly halide perovskites, with a focus on scalable deposition methods such as slot-die coating and inkjet printing. Alongside collaborators, they have developed various halide perovskie semiconductor prototype devices, including solar cells, printed LEDs and detectors.
March 2022 - Eleni Stavrinidou
Eleni Stavrinidou is an Associate Professor at Linköping University. Her research focuses on interfacing plants with electronics. This includes developing organic bioelectronic devices for controlling and monitoring plant physiology and plant responses to environmental stress, and new plant-based biohybrid systems for energy and sensing applications.
February 2022 - Jinhye Bae
Jinhye Bae is an Assistant Professor in the Department of NanoEngineering at the University of California San Diego. Her research is on understanding structure-property relationships in stimuli-responsive hydrogel-based systems, and developing novel manufacturing methods for programming their responsiveness and shape deformation at sub-mm length scales.
January 2022 - Tobias de Jong
Tobias de Jong is a researcher at the Leiden Institute of Physics in the Netherlands. His work focusses on imaging Van der Waals materials using Low Energy Electron Microscopy. His interests include image analysis, charge density waves, twisted bilayer graphene and computational imaging.
December 2021 - Alex Brogan
Alex Brogan is a Lecturer in Chemistry at King’s College London. His research focuses on developing protein-based biomaterials with high stability against temperature, aggregation, and non-aqueous environments. Current work is investigating how these materials can be used to enhance biocatalysis.
November 2021 - Donald Evans
Donald M. Evans is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Augsburg. He studies emergent quantum properties in low-dimensional systems, focusing on electronic correlation phenomena and their control via nano-engineering. To tackle their complex physics, he specializes in different imaging techniques including scanning probe and electron microscopy.
October 2021 - Alessandra Leonhardt
Alessandra obtained her PhD in Chemistry from KU Leuven and Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (imec), Belgium. Her research focused on 2D transition metal dichalcogenides, which she studied from the perspective of future large scale integration. She currently works with new materials for memory devices at ASM International.
September 2021 - Sean Blamires
Sean Blamires is a Research Officer at University of New South Wales, and Founder of the Spider Silk Research Lab. His research focuses on mechanisms of plastic variability in biological materials, particularly spider silks as they are ideal for multi-omics investigations. This research aims to bridge knowledge gaps between biological, chemical, physical, and materials science disciplines.
August 2021 - Roland Pellenq
Roland Pellenq is a Research Director at EPiDaPO ((Epi)Genetics, Data & Politics), a joint CNRS (French government Research Agency) and George Washington University laboratory. His research focuses on computational physics of porous materials, and urban physics applied to environmental, public health and climate challenges in cities.
July 2021 - Matthew Barnett
Matthew Barnett is Director of the Institute for Frontier Materials at Deakin University. His research focuses on developing recipes and processes to facilitate a circular economy in advanced alloys. This includes exploring how solid-state additive manufacturing produce high performance alloys from scrap and how new compositions can be designed to accept intermingled end-of-life input feed.
June 2021 - Sarah Benchabane
Sarah Benchabane is a Research Scientist at FEMTO-ST, a laboratory affiliated to le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Her research focuses on investigating elastic wave propagation and confinement in micro- and nanosystems. Her interests include microsonic phononic crystals, surface acoustic wave devices, micro-nano-systems and acousto-optical interactions.
May 2021 - Georges Goetz
Georges Goetz is a Senior Software Engineer at Waymo LLC, where he develops optical sensing methods and algorithms for self-driving applications. He previously held a position at Verily LLC and graduated with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, where his research focused on the development of a photovoltaic retinal implant.
April 2021 - Derek Stein
Derek Stein is an Associate Professor of Physics and Engineering at Brown University. His research interests include nanofluidics, nanopores, polymer physics, and the development of techniques for analyzing single proteins and DNA molecules. He is also interested in sustainable architecture and the development of advanced construction materials and techniques.
March 2021 - Martijn Kemerink
Martijn Kemerink is a Professor in ‘Hybrid and Organic Devices’ at the Center for Advanced Materials at the University of Heidelberg. His current research is on charge and energy transport in disordered, mostly organic semiconductors, and on their physics in devices. He also works on organic ferro- and piezoelectric materials for memory applications.
February 2021 - Neha Arora
Neha Arora is a Research Associate in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on investigating the structural, compositional and optoelectronic properties of next-generation organic and inorganic materials for their application in harnessing solar energy and in light-emitting devices.
January 2021 - Mariola Ramirez
Mariola Ramirez is an Associate Professor at Department of Materials Physics, University Autonoma of Madrid. Her research includes nonlinear optics, optical spectroscopy and lasers. Currently she works on hybrid plasmonics to develop subwavelength coherent optical sources with novel functionalities.
December 2020 - Ned Ekins-Daukes
Ned Ekins-Daukes is Associate Professor at the School of Photovoltaic & Renewable Energy Engineering, University of New South Wales. Ned’s research aims to fundamentally increase the efficiency of photovoltaic solar cells towards the ultimate efficiency limit of 93%. His research has application wherever high-power density is desirable, e.g. on spacecraft, terrestrial solar concentrator systems and electric vehicles.
November 2020 - Marios Demetriou
Marios Demetriou is the Chief Executive Officer of Glassimetal Technology, a technology company focusing on commercializing metallic glasses. He was previously a Research Professor at California Institute of Technology, where he is currently a Visiting Associate. His research interests include developing metallic glasses, investigating their structure and properties, and understanding the structure/property link to engineering performance.
October 2020 - Gabriela Borin Barin
Gabriela Borin Barin is a Research Scientist at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. Her research focuses on the on-surface synthesis and characterization of low-dimensional carbon materials using a combination of scanning probe and spectroscopy methods. She investigates the integration and potential application of these systems in future nanoelectronics.
September 2020 - Maren Roman
Maren Roman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials at Virgina Tech and the Director of GlycoMIP, an NSF Materials Innovation Platform. Her research group investigates the molecular properties of polysaccharides and other glycomaterials using a combination of microscopy and spectroscopy methods and quartz crystal microbalance, and their potential application in tissue engineering and drug delivery.
August 2020 - Alannah Hallas
Alannah Hallas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. Her group’s research centers on the design and discovery of new quantum materials using an interdisciplinary crystal growth toolkit. They then attempt to unveil and understand the intriguing magnetic and electronic states using neutron scattering and muon spin relaxation.
July 2020 - Joe Paddison
Joe Paddison is a Distinguished Staff Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA. His research focuses on understanding materials in which disorder of atoms and spins generates unconventional states of matter, such as spin liquids. He uses a combination of scattering experiments and atomistic modelling techniques to study the nanoscale structures and properties of these systems.
