The Stoddart Group welcomes the arrival of two new Postdoctoral Fellows – Isil Akpinar and Guangcheng Wu.
Isil grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. After obtaining her Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Istanbul, she completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering at University College London. Her PhD entailed the synthesis and characterization of porous materials such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and testing their adsorbent properties for water remediation applications. During her PhD she joined the Farha Group as a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University (NU) in September 2017. After completion of her degree, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the Advanced Materials Research Group in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nottingham under the EPSRC-funded Adventurous Manufacturing Project. She undertook research in the preparation of MOF thin films using an electrochemical atomic layer deposition technique accompanied by using machine learning to determine the optimal conditions for MOF thin film manufacturing. Upon joining the Stoddart Group as a Postdoctoral Fellow, Isil’s current research focuses on synthesizing Metal-Organic Frameworks under mild conditions.
Guangcheng was born and grew up in Guangzhou, China. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree at the Department of Chemistry at Zhejiang University. At the same university he obtained his PhD under the guidance of Professor Hao Li. His doctoral research focused on dynamic covalent chemistry and self-assembled structures based on imines, hydrazones, and oximes. In 2018 he was a short-term exchange student in the Stoddart Group at NU. After receiving his PhD in 2021, Guangcheng moved back to Northwestern, returning to the Stoddart Group to conduct research as a Postdoctoral Fellow. His current research interests include the design of novel host structures and functional mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs).
We are very happy to have you all on board and look forward to the wonderful research you will all undoubtedly perform!
Pictured below – New Postdoctoral Fellows Isil Akpinar and Guangcheng Wu:
