Two from ECE among 2019 President's Postdoctoral Scholars

The Ohio State University named its 10 young researchers as the 2019 cohort of President’s Postdoctoral Scholars. Among those, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering saw two highlighted for their work with faculty.

Andreas Fiedler received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the Humboldt-University of Berlin. In March 2015 he started working on his doctorate at the Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung (Leibniz Institute for Crystal Growth). His research focuses on the characterization of the formation and the influence of defects on the properties of ß-Ga2O3 – a promising material for power electronics. While working on his PhD, he contributed to nine articles, gave eight contributed talks and two poster presentations at international conferences. Andreas was elected as the representative for severely disabled persons to help them represent and defend their rights.

ECE Professor Siddharth Rajan is his faculty mentor. 

Nicole Pfiester received her BS in Physics from Purdue University, where she was first introduced to semiconductors through research on GaN nanowire growth via molecular beam epitaxy. She received an MS in Electrical Engineering and the first Joint-PhD in Electrical Engineering and Materials Science Engineering from Tufts University.

While working on her PhD, Nicole was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Future Leader of Engineering Fellow. Her research interests include photonic and optoelectronic devices, with an emphasis on leveraging materials engineering and nanostructures to improve their performance. She won several funding competitions and an award for her contributions to undergraduate education.

Professor Sanjay Krishna is her faculty mentor.

More than 70 people were nominated this year. The recipients were selected from a diverse and highly competitive pool of national and international applicants. The cohort’s research ranges from applying tissue engineering methodology to improve plastic surgery patient’s outcomes, to using novel mass spectrometry-based approaches to study histone proteins, to analyzing farmers’ livelihood strategies using social science theories, to examining the inflammatory mediators of stress exposure and neurodevelopment in preterm infants.

Read more about all 10 selected HERE.