UEC members serve as points of contact for all Users' Association members; in order to identify which current UEC member can best represent your interests, please consult the information provided below. If you do not feel that any current UEC member is suited to represent you, please contact the UEC Chair.
Matthew Whitaker [Chair]
Chair
Matt Whitaker is a Research Associate Professor at Stony Brook University in the Mineral Physics Institute and Department of Geosciences, and is the P.I. of the Synchrotron Earth and Environmental Sciences (NSF-SEES) Multi-Anvil High Pressure Program, overseeing the MAXPD Endstation at the XPD Beamline of NSLS-II and the 6-BM-B Multi-Anvil beamline at the Advanced Photon Source. He has been an active synchrotron user for twenty years at eighteen different beamlines at five different synchrotron facilities on three continents. He also finds it extremely strange to talk about himself in the third person. Presently, he is an active user at the SRX, TES, XFM, and XPD beamlines at NSLS-II and has served on the NSLS-II UEC starting in 2019. During this time, he co-created and continues to host the wildly popular NSLS-II UEC Show and has worked to increase UEC involvement both at NSLS-II and across the DOE Light Sources. Matt's interests lie in adapting synchrotron techniques to study everything from high pressure minerals and materials science to meteorites and planetary analogs. He specializes in Mineral Physics, Geochemistry, Planetary Science, and Solid-State Chemistry, and is very interested in pursuing multi-modal studies of materials using multiple techniques available at multiple beamlines, particularly at NSLS-II.
NSLS-II Programs: Hard X-Ray Methods, BEPSD, Imaging and Microscopy, Spectroscopy
Email: matthew.whitaker@stonybrook.edu
Wilson K. S. Chiu
Vice-Chair
Wilson K. S. Chiu is Professor in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Connecticut. Wilson’s research focuses on heat and mass transfer with chemical reactions, with applications to materials for sustainable energy applications (battery, electrolyzer, fuel cell, gas separation membrane, metal foam, molten salts, solar cell, waste form), carbon nano-materials, photonics, and semiconductors.
NSLS-II Program: Imaging and Microscopy, Hard X-ray Methods, Spectroscopy
Email: mailto:wilson.chiu@uconn.edu
Website: https://mechanical-aerospace-manufacturing.engineering.uconn.edu/person/chiu-wilson-k-s
Diana Monteiro
Past-Chair
Diana Monteiro serves as the Past Chair of the NSLS-II UEC.
NSLS-II Program: Structural Biology (BEPSD)
Email: diana.monteiro@nih.gov
Eta Isiorho
Outreach Officer
Eta Isiorho is the Macromolecular Crystallization Facility (MCF) core facility director in the Structural Biology Initiative (SBI) at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center’s (GC) Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC). She uses the macromolecular crystallography beamlines, AMX, FMX and NYX at NSLS-II. She is an ardent supporter that science is for everyone and enjoys giving tours of her facilities to demystify the science for the public.
Email: eisiorho@gc.cuny.edu
Zou Finfrock
Zou Finfrock is a physicist in the X-ray Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. She was Co-PI and program manager for the Canadian light Source (CLS) partner user program at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) for 2013-2021, acted as a Beamline Scientist as well as a partner facility user. As a program manager, she actively worked on developing relationships with new users and publicizing new capabilities at the APS to the user community. All these activities have given her perspective on the needs of both users and facility. She was APS user steering committee vice chair for 2020 and chair for 2021. Her current role at the APS is to develop a new user program to serve the biological and environmental scientific community. Her research interests are utilizing x-ray techniques to address scientific challenges in broad range of sciences, particularly using x-ray imaging techniques (microscopy, ptychography and tomography), advanced spectroscopy, scattering and MX. She is also interested in x-ray technical development to enhance user science. She has led multiple technical development at the APS beamlines, such as sub-micron focusing capability, X-ray Excited Optical Luminescence (XEOL), High Energy Resolution Fluorescence Detection (HERFD) and confocal x-ray fluorescence microscopy.
NSLS-II Program: Structural Biology (BEPSD)
Email: zfinfrock@anl.gov
Lucas Flagg
Lucas Flagg is a research chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Lucas frequently uses beamlines in the Complex Scattering group to reveal structure-function-performance relationships in conjugated polymers.
NSLS-II Program: Complex Scattering, Electronic Structure Techniques
Email: lucas.flagg@nist.gov
Peijjun Guo
After spending three years at Argonne National Lab as an Enrico Fermi Named Postdoc Fellow, Peijun Guo joined the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University, with his lab hosted under the Energy Sciences Institute on Yale’s west campus. His group develops and employs optical spectroscopy and microscopy to understand the structure-property relationships in materials for energy conversion and storage.
NSLS-II Program: Imaging and Microscopy
Email: peijun.guo@yale.edu
Yijin Liu
Yijin Liu, an Associate Professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at UT Austin, has over 15 years of experience in X-ray characterization methods for diverse scientific research. His work focuses on battery manufacturing, safety, degradation, and failure analysis. As an active user, he utilizes advanced NSLS-II facilities, including HXN and FXI, to drive innovation in these areas.
NSLS-II Programs: Imaging and Microscopy
Email: liuyijin@utexas.edu
Robert Palomino
Robert Palomino is a Senior Chemist II at BASF Corporation located in Iselin, NJ since 2018. He conducts X-ray Spectroscopy and Microscopy studies in the Materials Characterization group of the Catalysts department. His research focuses on X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy and X-ray Micro-computed Tomography (XMT) along with AI-assisted segmentation of the resultant 3D images. This is employed for various fields, including environmental catalysts, battery materials, refining catalysts, pigments, and coatings. His work at BASF involves collaborations with universities and synchrotron facilities globally. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from St. John’s University and his Ph.D. from State University of New York Stony Brook. Prior to joining BASF, Robert was a Postdoc at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), joint between the Chemistry Division and the NSLS-II. He has collaborations with several synchrotron facilities as part of his role at BASF, including NSLS-II. He utilizes the XPD, BMM and FXI beamlines at NSLS-II. He is interested in promoting the use of NSLS-II by industry partners and having increased access to beamlines as well as improved data evaluation/analysis methods by users of NSLS-II beamline.
NSLS-II Programs: Electronic Structure Techniques, Hard X-Ray Methods, Spectroscopy, Imaging and Microscopy
Email: robert.palomino@basf.com
Troy Rasbury
Troy Rasbury is a professor at Stony Brook University in the Department of Geosciences. She is a geochemist and specializes in U-Pb dating of minerals such as calcite, dolomite and fluorite. She has been a long-time user of synchrotrons, particularly using hard- and tender X-ray microprobes to understand U speciation and redox. This work is relevant to U-Pb dating but also provides important information on long-term sequestration of U (well beyond lab experiments and super fund sites) as well as insights into ore forming processes. She nominated herself for the UEC because she wanted to make a difference for general users and particularly geoscientists for making changes that ensure everyone gets a fair shot at beamtime.
NSLS-II Program: BEPSD, Spectroscopy
Email: troy.rasbury@stonybrook.edu
Shan Yan
Shan Yan performs research at multiple NSLS-II beamlines covering X-ray diffraction, soft and hard X-ray absorption spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, imaging and tomography techniques along with Operando Synchrotron techniques in multiple systems.
Shan is a chemical and material scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and an affiliated member of the Institute of Energy: Sustainability, Environment and Equity at Stony Brook University.
NSLS-II Programs: Hard X-ray Methods, Electronic Structure Techniques, Imaging and Microscopy
Email: syan@bnl.gov
Aswin Anbalagan
Post-Doc Representative
Aswin Anbalagan is a postdoctoral research associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) under Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA) program, where he studies and characterizes quantum materials, particularly qubits/resonators, using various scattering and spectroscopy techniques (using both soft and hard X-rays) at the National Synchrotron Light Source-II (NSLS-II). Aswin has served as the secretary of the Association of Students and Postdocs (ASAP) at BNL since December 2022.
NSLS-II Program: Electronic Structure Techniques, Spectroscopy
Email: aanbalaga1@bnl.gov
Elizabeth Cote
Student Representative
Elzabeth Cote is the Graduate Student Representative for the UEC, representing Hard X-Rays research. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Walsh lab at UMass Amherst, where she is investigating high pressure synthesis methods for the discovery of novel transition metal carbides. Liz has been a user at MAXPD since March of 2023.
NSLS-II Program: Hard X-Ray Methods
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ecote2/
Email: eecote@umass.edu
Mercy Baez
NSLS-II User Administrator
Mercy is pretty much the greatest of all time at whatever she chooses to be the greatest of or at. This is not up for debate.
NSLS-II Programs: All of them
Email: baez@bnl.gov
