Meet the Team
Dr. Thomas E. Ashton
Tom is a Lecturer at the Institute for Materials discovery based at UCL East and is passionate about bridging the gap between fundamental science and industral applications.
Fay Abu-Al-Timen
Fay is accelerating the discovery and optimisation of energy materials using automated synthesis, analysis, data processing and predictive modelling.
Yihao Ding
Yihao is mastering the thermokinetics of Na-ion cathode synthesis to produce high performance materials in just minutes using state-of-the-art rapid heating and cooling.
Churun Zhang
Churun is leading the way in high-throughput robotic synthesis of functionalised magnetic nanoparticles for critical medical applications. She also loves mangoes.
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Jiayi Li
Jiayi will be joining us in October 2026. Watch this space for some exciting new science!
Matea Bjørklund
Matea will be joining us in October 2026 starting with a 1-year placement at STFC ISIS. She aims to develop non-invasive muonic X-ray tomography to understand the chemical properties energy materials and devices.
Jialin Liu
Jialin will be joining us in October 2026 to work on the automated discovery of Prussian Blue Analogues, continuing her work from her MAPS Faculty Internship after her recent MSc.
Advanced Materials Science MSc Students 2024/25
Our IMD 2024/25 MSc Cohort after their final poster presentations.
A novel solid state ionic conductor discovered by our project student Jiusi Jhang!
Advanced Materials Science MSc Students 2023/24
Top Row (L to R): Ruize Chen, Ruting, Chen, Thomas Ashton, Ken Lin, Qingxiang Wang, Haoming Xu, Ke Zheng.
Bottom Row (L to R): Chia-Shang Chen, Yuhan Wang, Yihao Ding, Jinhui Hu
Over 300 Na-ion electrodes in just a few weeks!
The MSc cohort made great strides in accelerating our understanding of how elemental composition and processing conditions can affect the atomic structure and performance of new Na-battery materials.