Toward Controlled Thermal Energy Storage and Release in Organic Phase Change Materials

Grace Han was born in South Korea and graduated from POSTECH with a BS in Chemistry. She obtained her PhD in Chemistry at MIT in 2015 and joined the Department ofMaterials Science and Engineering at MIT as a postdoctoral associate. Grace started her independent career as an assistant professor at the DepartmentofChemistry at BrandeisUniversity in 2018. Her research interests span energy conversion and storage, molecular switch chemistry, phase transition of materials, and atomic-resolution molecular imaging. Mihael Gerkman received his BS in Chemistry from SUNY Potsdam in 2016. Currently, he is pursuing his PhD at Brandies University in the Han group. His research is focused on the synthesis of novel molecular switches and the study of their reversible isomerization dynamics in condensed phases for thermal energy storage applications.