Appenzeller Group
Joerg Appenzeller
Dr. Appenzeller received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the Technical University of Aachen, Germany in 1991 and 1995. His Ph.D. dissertation investigated quantum transport phenomena in low dimensional systems based on III/V heterostructures. He worked for one year as a Research Scientist in the Research Center in Juelich, Germany before he became an Assistant Professor with the Technical University of Aachen in 1996. During his professorship he explored mesoscopic electron transport in different materials including carbon nanotubes and superconductor-semiconductor-hybride devices. From 1998 to 1999, he was with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, as a Visiting Scientist, exploring the ultimate scaling limits of silicon MOSFET devices. From 2001 until 2007, he had been with the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown, NY, as a Research Staff Member mainly involved in the investigation of the potential of carbon nanotubes and silicon nanowires for a future nanoelectronics. Since 2007 he is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University and Scientific Director of Nanoelectronics in the Birck Nanotechnology Center. In 2014, he receives the Barry M. and Patricia L. Epstein Professorship. His current interests include novel devices based on low-dimensional nano-materials as nanotubes, nanowires, graphene and transition-metal dichalcogenides.
Neil R. Dilley
Neil Dilley is a physicist specializing in cryogenic measurements and design. He has a PhD in physics from UC San Diego where he synthesized novel rare earth intermetallic systems and studied superconducting and magnetic properties. Following his PhD, he worked at Quantum Design,Inc. in San Diego for 16 years in both new product development and applications departments where he instructed and collaborated with the worldwide customer base of materials researchers. In May 2016 he joined the Spintronics Pre-eminent Team as a research scientist overseeing the new Spintronics Lab featuring two newly purchased state-of-the-art instruments from Quantum Design.
John Daniel
John received his undergraduate Physics degree from Imperial College London in 2015. He then went on to complete a 1-year MSci Degree in "Nanomaterials", again at Imperial College London. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University and joined Professor Appenzeller's group in the Fall semester of 2018. His research interests include electronic transport, spintronic devices and the fabrication of magnetic tunneling junctions.
Daniel Eppler
Daniel received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2018. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue and joined Professor Appenzeller's group in the Fall semester of 2019. His research is in nanoelectronics focusing on fabrication of 2D semiconductor FETs and nanoscale contact engineering.
Zheng Sun
Zheng received his MS in Electrical Engineering from the George Washington University in 2020. He worked as a NIST guest researcher for one year during his master. He is currently pursuing a PhD degree in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. His research interest focuses on 2D semiconductor FETs, contact engineering and low-dimensional ultrafast switching devices.
Jun Cai
Jun received his B.S. degree in Physics from University of Science and Technology of China in 2020. His former research focused on nanoelectronics (functional oxide heterojunction and ferroelectric devices) and scanning scope microscopy. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering at Purdue University.
Xuejian (Marvin) Zhang
Marvin received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 2020. He then came to Purdue University in pursuit of a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering. His current research focuses on the fabrication of magnetic tunneling junctions and the integration of such devices into probablistic computing circuits.
Isaac Hagedorn
Isaac graduated with his BS in Computer Engineering and Industrial Management in the Spring of 2023 from Purdue University. During his time, he focused on research with autonomous racing as well as wearable haptics. He is currently pursuing his MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering and maintains research focuses on hardware security for ASICs and device security.
Caleb Suhy
Caleb is an undergraduate student double majoring in Electrical Engineering and Physics. He joined Professor Appenzeller’s group in the Fall semester of 2023. His research focuses on the fabrication of magnetic tunnel junctions and their integration with CMOS circuits.
Yongjae Cho
Yongjae received a PhD in applied physics from Yonsei University, Seoul in Aug 2021. His Ph.D. thesis mainly focuses on fabrication and improvement of transistors with novel semiconductor and materials. He joined Professor Appenzeller's group in Feb 2023. He is working on nanoelectronics focusing on fabrication FETs with of low dimensional semiconductors FETs.
Himani Jawa
Himani received her MTech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (2016) and Ph.D. in Microelectronics and VLSI, Department of Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India in 2023. Her Ph.D. dissertation focused on interface engineering in field effect transistors and photodetectors based on two-dimensional materials. She is also a recipient of Visvesvaraya fellowship (2016-2021) from Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, India. She is currently a postdoctoral research assistant of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in Prof Appenzeller’s and Prof Chen’s group. Her research interests include electrical and optoelectronic study of 2D material-based devices and heterostructures.
Sumith Varaganti
Sumith received his undergraduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2021 and his master's degree from Tohoku University in 2024. He is now pursuing his PhD in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and his research focuses on fabrication of stochastic magnetic tunneling junctions based on novel magnetic materials for applications in probabilistic computing.
Sumaiya J. Tabassum
Sumaiya completed her undergraduate studies from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. She has previously worked on performing DFT simulations on two dimensional nanoelectronic devices and heterostructures. She started pursuing her PhD in Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue in summer 2024. Her current research interests are focused on building probabilistic bits using stochastic magnetic tunnelling junctions.
Former Post Doctoral Researchers
Yang Sui
Current affiliation: General Electric, Albany, New York
Christian Sandow
Current affiliation: PNSensor
Sebastian Feste
Current affiliation: Global Foundries, Germany
Tony Low
Current affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Suprem Das
Current affiliation: Iowa State University
Former PhD Students
Peng Wu
Current affiliation: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ruiping Zhou
Current affiliation: Intel
Vaibhav Ostwal
Current affiliation: Micron
Tingting Shen
Current affiliation: Intel
Feng Zhang
Current affiliation: Intel
Ashish Verma Penumatcha
Current affiliation: Intel
Yuqi Zhu
Current affiliation: Intel
Abhijith Prakash
Current affiliation: Western Digital
Ali Razavieh
Current affiliation: Pennsylvania State University
Yunfei Gao
Current affiliation: Micron, Idaho
Hong-Yan Chen
Current affiliation: Sandisk, California
Saptarshi Das
Current affiliation: Pennsylvania State University
Josh Smith
Current affiliation: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Ramon Salazar
Current affiliation: GlobalFoundries
Former Master Students
Sahil Bansal
Current affiliation: Applied Materials, Inc.
Drew Candebat
Current affiliation: University of South Carolina
Caitlin Wildeson
Current affiliation: Shmoop
Jamil Shehadeh
Current affiliation: Marvel Israel Ltd.
Yuri Kubo
Current affiliation: SpaceX
