Rosenberger awarded postdoc at Naval Research Lab

7/21/2016 Miranda Holloway, MechSE Communications

  MechSE PhD candidate Matt Rosenberger is trading in his office in Mechanical Engineering Building for a lab on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.    Rosenberger, a researcher in Professor Bill King’s Nanoengineering Lab since 2010, was awarded the National Research Council Postdoctoral Fello

Written by Miranda Holloway, MechSE Communications

 
MechSE PhD candidate Matt Rosenberger is trading in his office in Mechanical Engineering Building for a lab on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. 
 
Rosenberger, a researcher in Professor Bill King’s Nanoengineering Lab since 2010, was awarded the National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship to work at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
 
“This kind of recognition reminds us all how privileged we are to have some of the best students in the world in our program,” said Anthony Jacobi, MechSE department head and Richard W. Kritzer Distinguished Professor. 
 
Rosenberger said his research in King’s lab centers around three areas: thermal mechanical expansion and the degradation of transistors; mechanical property measurements; and studying the inferred properties of molecules. For his PhD work, using micro-cantilevers and AFM, he measures the thermal, optical, and mechanical properties of heat transfer at the nanoscale. 
 
His one-year appointment with a group in the electronics division at the Naval Research Lab will be a natural transition from his work at Illinois. The group focuses on 2D materials, honing in on a class called transition metal dichalcogenides. These are similar to the much-studied 2D material graphene, but have a more significant band gap, which means their properties can be modulated significantly—opening them up to a number of applications, including chemical sensors. 
 
“This group knows a lot about material science, chemistry, and physics, and I know a lot about local measurements,” Rosenberger said. “It’s a nice wedding of expertise.”
 
Rosenberger said this award, in comparison to similar appointments, is that the application process required a proposal, so he knows exactly the work he will be doing when he arrives. 
 
“There is a lot more ownership of the work with an award like this,” he said. 
 
Rosenberger grew up in Urbana and earned both his BSME (2010) and MSME from the University of Illinois. 
 
 
 
 

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This story was published July 21, 2016.