Dr. S. Pamir Alpay
p.alpay@ims.uconn.edu

Professor S. Pamir Alpay received his BS (1990) and MS (1993) from the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and his PhD (1999) from the Department of Materials Engineering of the University of Maryland. Dr. Alpay worked as a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Maryland for 1.5 years. He joined the faculty of the University of Connecticut in Oct. 2000 as an Assistant Professor. His interest areas concentrate on the theory and modeling of properties of thin film functional and electronic materials. Dr. Alpay is the recipient of a NATO-A1 doctoral scholarship (1994), the Departmental Fellowship for Outstanding Research at the University of Maryland (1998), the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award (2001), and Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, School of Engineering at the University of Connecticut (2004).Dr Alpay recently became an Associate Professor.

Dr. Shan Zhong
shan.zhong@ims.uconn.edu

Shan Zhong received his BS degree in Department of Materials Science and Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China in 2003. He worked on tape casting processing for novel carbon-carbon composite materials in PEMFC for his BS degree. He received his master's degree in Materials Engineering in 2005. His thesis concentrated on modeling of ferroelectric bilayers. Shan defended his PhD thesis in September 2007. He is going to start working as a Research Engineer at Intel, Arizona.

Mr. Gursel Akcay
PhD Candidate
gursel@engr.uconn.edu

Gursel Akcay received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey in 2000. He was admitted to the University of Connecticut (UCONN), Mechanical Engineering Department as a master's student in the same year. Gursel was transferred to MMAT at UCONN to join the FM Group as a PhD candidate, in 2004. He received his master's degree in Materials Engineering in 2006. His thesis concentrated on the dynamic pyroelectric response of homogeneous ferroelectrics. Currently, Gursel is working on the intrinsic electrocaloric effect of the ferroelectrics and modeling of graded ferroelectric thin films.

Mr. Bamidele Allimi
PhD Candidate
allimi_bs@yahoo.com

Dele received his Bachelors (Engineering Physics) in 2000 from The Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria. After working for two years with Deloitte and Touche, Nigeria, he moved to Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA where he received his Masters degree (Physics) in 2005. He worked on the construction of solar cooker and Photocurrrent measurement of Gallium Arsenide deposited on Silicon by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) technique for his Bachelors and Masters thesis respectively. Dele joined the Functional Materials group as a PhD candidate in Fall, 2005.

Mr. M. Baris Okatan
PhD Candidate
baris.okatan@uconn.edu

Mr. Okatan received his BS and MS in Metallurgical and Materials Science from the Middle East Technical University in 2003 and 2006, respectively. He joined the Functional Materials Group in January 2007. He is currently working on analytical solution of the graded ferroelectric thin films problem.

Ms. Claire Weiss
PhD Candidate
claire.weiss@huskymail.uconn.edu

Ms. Weiss received her BA in physics from Lawrence University in Appleton, WI in 2007. She first became interested in materials science during the summer of 2006 at a physics REU at the University of Minnesota. While there, she researched spin ejection in ferromagnet-semiconductor heterostructures for the development of spintronic devices. She was accepted into the PhD program in materials science and engineering at UConn in 2007 and joined the functional materials group in order to research BST thin films.

Mr. Yong Liu
PhD Candidate
yong.liu@huskymail.uconn.edu

Yong Liu received his BS and Master's degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Beihang University (formerly Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), China in 2002 and 2005, respectively. He joined Prof. Alpay's group as a Ph.D candidate in August 2007. Currently, Yong is working on modeling and development of highly reliable and self-healing novel electrical contact materials.

Former Post Doc.s and Students

Mr. Kevin Rankin
Ms. Sarah Winiarz
Dr. I. Burc Misirlioglu, Ph.D., 2006
Dr. Zhigang Ban, Ph.D, 2003, post doc, August 2003-June 2004
Dr. Menderes Cirakoglu, March 2002-March 2003
Mr. Anuj Sharma, M.Sc. student, August 2002-May 2004