Research Experience and Work
I have switched between many fields. Some were intentional. Some were not.
These experiences broaden my scope of understanding the world.
2024 - present
Founder
Golden State Education (Irvine, CA)
Golden State Education was founded as a brand under Out & Seen to provide the next generation with one-stop solutions for personal and professional development.
Read More about my thought process in experimenting the next generation education with this effort and why I eventually switched gear.
2019 - present
Staff Scientist & TEMPR Lab Director
Irvine Materials Research Institute, University of California Irvine (Irvine, CA)
Established and leading a cross-disciplinary and collaborative materials characterization lab with the capability of measuring thermal, elemental, mechanical, physical, and rheological properties of materials in a vast variety of research and application fields.
Directing original research and collaborative projects. Areas of research interests include organic semiconductors, functional composite materials, and flexible integrated electronics.
Read More about my role directing TEMPR Lab for 6 years and counting.
I have also created a new platform - TEMPR Learning - to teach all materials researchers the practical know-hows.
2017 - present
Managing Partner & Co-Founder
NovaTeq Solutions (Irvine, CA)
Co-founded in 2017 using innovative approaches to develop technology and intellectual property.
Provided customized display and sensing consulting solutions to technology companies aiming to develop market-viable display/sensor products and develop new proprietary technologies.
Helped to secure over billion-dollar revenues for clients in intellectual properties licensing.
2017 - 2018
Principal Scientist, Materials Development & Device Engineering
Carbon Nanotube Technologies (Los Angeles, CA)
Overseeing the materials development team developing carbon nanotube semiconductors and their applications in thin-film transistors, photovoltaics, and sensors.
Developed a chromatographic protocol for mass production of 99.9% pure single chirality single wall carbon nanotube ink that provides fully printed thin-film transistors with >100 cm2/V∙s mobility and >106 on/off ratio.
2016 - 2022
Founder
Polaris Promos (Los Angeles, CA)
Founded in 2016 for custom design, prototyping, and manufacturing of promotional products per customer needs.
Delivered hundreds of thousand products with great customer satisfaction with sales reaching $1 M per year.
Read More about why I founded Polaris Promos in 2016 and our mission and why I eventually closed it down.
2015 - 2019
Editorial Board Member
Heliyon (An Elsevier Open Access Journey)
Served as Editorial Board Member for Heliyon (an open-access Elsevier journal) handling the peer-review process of manuscripts in the areas of Materials Science.
2015 - 2017
Technical Lead, Display and Sensor Engineering
Polyradiant Corporation, A UCLA Startup (Los Angeles, CA)
Led the R&D effort of new materials discovery and integrated anode structures for flexible and stretchable organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) panel prototypes with efficiency achieved at 200% of devices made off of conventional ITO/glass anode with 50% reduced cost.
Led the development of proprietary flexible transparent conductor film at thickness < 10 microns and letter size with figure-of-merit (transmittance versus sheet resistance) nearly 50% higher than standard ITO, which is currently under pilot production for touch screen application.
Managed design/prototyping of a smart vent system using electroactive soft materials and 3D-printed components and established cost models through market analysis.
Established R&D facility from scratch and enabled a streamlined protocol from polymer material synthesis, thin-film coating, to fully-printed device fabrication.
2015 - 2017
Development Engineer
Department of Materials Science & Engineering, University of California Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA)
Led research projects on delivering new dielectric composite materials with high tensile strength (~GPa), thermal stability (>300 °C), and tear-resistance for flexible OLED, battery, and thin-film transistors (TFT) applications.
Directed the design and fabrication of a prototype fully stretchable AMOLED display panels.
Directed the development of a multilayered high transparency (>85%) thin film for high performance electromagnetic interference shielding.
2012 - present
Photographer & Storyteller
Out & Seen
Teaching and learning through photography, traveling, and storytelling.
Read More about my passion in photography and outdoors and how I combine the two to create Out & Seen.
2012 - 2015
Project Scientist
Center for Polymers & Organic Solids, University of California Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA)
Led research projects to deliver the next-generation organic semiconductors providing (1) thin-film transistors survive over 300 °C at a hole mobility of 10-1 cm/V∙s; (2) printed solar cell devices with 7~8% efficiency in 2012. These efforts were twice selected as JACS Spotlights.
Directed research effort in developing a series of dopant-free and water-soluble polymer materials with conductivity close to PEDOT:PSS for thermoelectric application.
Involved in collaborated projects performing materials reliability and lifetime assessment on flexible thin-film solar cell devices under accelerated environmental conditions.
Given guest lectures on “nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and elemental analysis for materials synthesis and characterization”.
2009 - 2012
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA)
Led the research project of developing interfacial modification within thin-film devices to generally enhance solar cell device efficiency by more than 40%.
Developed synthetic protocols for producing polymer semiconductors and block copolymer materials with a molecular weight of >200,000 Da at polydispersity index of <1.5.
2004 - 2009
Graduate Student Researcher
CAS Key Lab for Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry - Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, China)
Led the effort in developing a mild chemical approach for the synthesis of composite materials comprising well-dispersed metal nanoparticles throughout polymer material matrix with pronounced nonlinear optical properties.
Discovered a synthetic method for sustainable synthesis of water-soluble gold quantum dots with a quantum yield of >14% in 2008 which is among the highest values ever reported.
2002 - 2004
Undergraduate Researcher
Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Peking University (Beijing, China)
Performed hands-on design and synthesis of eighteen androstene-based drug candidates using Suzuki-Miyaura reaction for prostate cancer treatment.