Three candidates have been selected to receive the Maria Goeppert Mayer Fellowship. The 2019 fellows are Ashley Bielinski (MSD), Zachary Hood (AMD), and Lei Sun (NST).
The Maria Goeppert Mayer (MGM) Fellowship brings new research ideas and capabilities to the lab through the recruitment of world-class science and engineering talent. Candidates are selected based on their record of achievement, academic accomplishments, and the strength of their research proposal.
Fellows will spearhead independent research that supports Argonne’s mission to accelerate science and technology that drive U.S. prosperity and security. Bringing potential future leaders in their fields to conduct research at Argonne is the first step to solving the world’s most complex problems. Funding for the fellows is provided through the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program.
“These awards are named in honor of Maria Goeppert Mayer, an Argonne pioneer who received the Nobel Prize in physics for work with mathematical models of nuclear shell structure,” said Argonne Laboratory Director Paul Kearns. “The recipients of these fellowships now have the opportunity to make their own contributions to Argonne’s mission of unlocking new science and technological frontiers. I congratulate them on their selection.”
Ashley Bielinski
2019 Maria Goeppert Mayer Fellows
Ashley Bielinski earned her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota and is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan in the department of mechanical engineering. Her research focuses on rational design of semiconductor nanostructures using atomic layer deposition to modify surfaces and interfaces.
Bielinski’s proposed research as a fellow will address defects at surfaces and interfaces, which have a large effect on the performance of many devices for energy conversion and computer processing. Understanding the defects in electronic, chemical, and structural properties of these interfaces at the atomic scale is key to developing improved interface properties.
Bielinski was sponsored by Alex Martinson (MSD) and will carry out her research in the Materials Science division.
Zachary Hood who received his Bachelor of Science degree from Wake Forest University and completed his Ph.D. degree in February 2018 at the Georgia Institute of Technology. After completing his Ph.D., Hood immediately began a postdoctoral associate position this at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also has pursued research as a National Science Foundation 
Graduate Student Fellow and Oak Ridge National Laboratory – Georgia Tech Fellow.
As an MGM Fellow, Hood will pursue a number of synthetic and experimental strategies for lithium and sodium solid electrolytes, and he will place these studies within the larger context of a general class of problems related to chemistry and materials science-based synthesis of next-generation materials for energy storage and conversion.
Hood was sponsored by Ed Barry (AMD) and will conduct his research in the Applied Materials division.
Lei Sun who received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Nanjing University in 2011, and earned a Ph.D. degree in inorganic chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2017. Currently, Sun is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University. His projects include development of multi-qubit molecular quantum processors with synthetic chemistry and fabrication of single-molecule electron paramagnetic resonance devices.
As an MGM Fellow, Sun proposes to develop on-chip quantum processors based on molecular electron spin qubits.
Lei Sun
He plans to fabricate devices that address individual qubit and entangle multiple qubits. His interdisciplinary research will establish the candidacy of molecules for quantum computing, and will bring chemical opportunities to quantum information science.
Sun was sponsored by Tijana Rajh (NST) and will carry out his research in the Nanoscience and Technology division.