March 29, 2024 - Collaborative work led  by the Chen lab was recently published  in Nature Nanotechnology. See the article here and press release here.

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March 29, 2024 - Congrats to Jiayue Sun for receiving a Summer Research Fellowship through the Graduate School!

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October 13, 2023 - Our feature article reviewing our recently published in situ TEM work on nanoparticle formation mechanisms is published in Chemical Communications! Congrats to Amy, Umesha, and Jiayue! See the paper here.

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August 29, 2023 - Medha received the 2023 MRS best paper award for her work on polymer capsules that utilize osmotic pressure to generate structural color. Congrats!

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August 29, 2023 - Umesha's paper on interparticle interactions during dissipative assembly of colloids was recently published in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science. Congrats!

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June 13, 2023 - Jiayue's paper on the formation mechanism of high entropy alloy (HEA) nanoparticles has been published in Nanoscale. The work reveals that HEA nanoparticles form during liquid phase synthesis via aggregation of sub-nanometer metal clusters. Congrats!

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June 2, 2023 - Medha's paper on temperature reversible pearlescent hydrogel capsules is published in Advanced Functional Materials! The paper describes synthesis of macroscopic multicomponent hydrogel capsules that display a pearl like sheen upon heating. Congrats!

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May 30, 2023 - Our collaborative paper with the Das lab is published in Nanotechnology, with Jiayue serving as co-first author. The paper uses high resolution TEM imaging and numerical simulations to uncover residual polymer coatings on nanoparticles as the mechanism for reduced conductivity in nanoparticle  inks deposits for flexible circuits. Congrats!

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March 22, 2023 - Yuhang and Jiayue's paper in collaboration with the Asa-Awuku lab is published in Journal of Physical Chemistry A. The paper describes experimental observations and modeling of electric field induced water condensation during vapor phase transmission electron microscopy. Congrats!

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February 4, 2023 - Shakiba's paper is accepted for publication in Biomacromolecules. The work focuses on using redox chemistry to create transient protein hydrogels and the effects of protein unfolding on the hydrogel properties. Congrats!

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February 2, 2023 - Amy's first paper is accepted for publication in Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. The work focuses on establishing the deposition mechanism of silver onto gold nanorods using liquid phase TEM. This work was done in collaboration with Army Research lab. Congrats! See the paper here.

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January 19, 2023 - Prof. Woehl gives a seminar at his alma mater, University of California, Davis. Great to be back to see the Chemical Engineering Department and Ristenpart lab doing awesome science!

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January 19, 2023 - We have received funding from NSF for our collaboration with Xitong Liu's group at George Washington University. The grant will investigate nucleation mechanisms of minerals on polymer surfaces.  Congrats to both labs!

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December 15, 2022 - Congrats to Shakiba, who graduated with her PhD in december! She will move onto a postdoctoral fellowship at LLNL. Good luck!

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November 1, 2022 - Jiayue Sun won a best graduate student poster award at the liquid phase electron microscopy GRC in Ventura, CA. She was 1 of 5 awardees among 50+ students. Congrats!

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November 1, 2022 - Prof. Woehl was elected the liquid phase electron microscopy GRC co vice-chair with a term of 2022-2024. He will serve as co-chair from 2024-2026. Congrats!

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May 27, 2022 - Prof. Woehl has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. Congrats! See the press release here.

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May 17, 2022 - Congrats to undergraduates Allison, Justin, Sarangua, and Aengus in our lab for completing their BS degrees! Sarangua and Aengus are sticking around for their MS, but Justin and Allison are moving onto bigger and better things!

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March 23, 2022 - Our patent has been issued, "Electrochemical measurement of electron beam-induced pH change during liquid cell electron microscopy." Congrats!

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December 23, 2021 - Congrats to Shakiba for winning the Clark Doctoral Fellows Mid-career research award for her excellent work on protein aggregation and fluorescence spectroscopy!

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December 14, 2021 - Congrats to Medha for passing her proposal defense!

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December 13, 2021 - Mei's final paper on supraparticle assembly dynamics is published in Nanoscale. Congrats! See the pre-print here.

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December 9, 2021 - Congrats to Jiayue on passing her 2nd year literature review!

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November 29, 2021 - Welcome to our new Ph.D. student Yuhang Wang from Chemistry & Biochemistry! He will be imaging the dynamics of cloud condensation using in situ TEM.

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July 25, 2021 - Congrats to Umesha and Medha for having their first papers accepted to Langmuir and ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces!

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July 25, 2021 - Congrats to Mei for receiving 3rd place in the Dean's Research Award for her dissertation research!

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June 27, 2021 - Prof. Woehl receives the NSF CAREER award to investigate mechanisms of multimetallic nanocrystal formation with liquid phase electron microscopy. Congrats!

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April 20, 2021 - Congrats to Nathan Wong for completing his M.S. thesis and defense! Nathan is the first M.S. student to graduate from the lab and will be moving onto a position at Intel.

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April 20, 2021 - Congrats to Mei Wang for completing her Ph.D. dissertation and defense! She is the first Ph.D. student to graduate from the lab and will be moving onto a position at Intel.

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April 13, 2021 - We've completed a significant lab renovation, including installation of several new instruments, a new ceiling, and benches. Pictures on the way.

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March 23, 2021 - Congrats to Amy for receiving a Hulka Fellowship for her Ph.D. research on electrocatalysts! Thanks to MEI2 for the funding!

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January 26, 2021 - Mei's new paper on visualizing bimetallic nanocrystal formation mechanisms with in situ TEM has been published in ACS Nano. Congrats! See the paper here and the press release here.

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January 26, 2021 - Happy new year! Welcome to our newest Ph.D. student, Jiayue Sun, from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry! She will research cloud droplet nucleation on aerosols using in situ TEM.

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December 29, 2020 - Welcome to Amy Chen, our newest Ph.D. student from the Materials Science and Engineering department! She will be working with collaborators at the Army Research Lab on rational nanoparticle catalyst design.

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November 23, 2020 - Take a look at the Research page for new recordings of a few presentations Prof. Woehl gave at AICHE 2020 on colloidal electrokinetics and dissipative assembly.

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September 22, 2020 - Our supplementary cover art is published in this weeks issue of Chemistry of Materials. Congrats! See the cover art to the left and at the link here.

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August 18, 2020 - We have received funding from the National Science Foundation to investigate behavior of micron sized colloids in pH gradients and electric fields with applications in particulate separations. Congrats! See the press release here.

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July 2, 2020 - We have received funding from the FDA for a collaborative project with scientists in the Office of Generic Drugs to develop new optical interferometric scattering microscopy techniques to characterize nanoparticle-based drugs. Congrats!

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June 15, 2020 - We have received funding from the National Science Foundation to investigate the mechanism of cloud droplet formation on organic aerosols using in situ TEM. This work is in collaboration with Prof. Akua Asa-Awuku. Congrats! See the press release here.

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May 21, 2020 - Justin received an ASPIRE fellowship for summer research on self-assembly of nanoparticles. Congrats!

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April 28, 2020 - We have received funding from the Army Research Office to investigate mechanisms of dissipative assembly of nanoparticles. Congrats! See the press release here.

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April 4, 2020 - Mei receives the 2020 Microscopy & Microanalysis meeting student scholar award. This prestigious award is given to the best student papers submitted to the meeting and provides funding to travel to the meeting. Congrats Mei!

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March 30, 2020 - Mei receives the Wylie Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Maryland Graduate School to support her finishing up her dissertation research. Congrats on this prestigious award Mei!

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March 10, 2020 - Nathan is accepted to the SURF (Summer undergraduate research fellowship) program at NIST-Gaithersburg to work with our collaborators Steve Hudson and Paul Salipante. Congrats! 

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January 20, 2020 - Shakiba received an NIH G-SOAR summer fellowship to do research on single molecule fluorescence at NIH this summer. Congrats!

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January 3, 2020 - New year, new science! Dr. Woehl will travel to the inaugural liquid phase TEM Gordon Research Conference in Italy in a few weeks to deliver an invited lecture. Thanks to the organizers for the invite! 

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November 12, 2019 - Our perspective on translating in situ TEM data to new design rules for nanoparticle self-assembly is accepted to ACS Nano. Congrats! See the paper here.

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November 8, 2019 - Prof. Woehl gives a seminar at the Irvine Materials Research Institute at UC-Irvine. Thanks to Joe Patterson for the invite!

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October 24, 2019 - We have received funding from a Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator award to investigate formation mechanisms of bimetallic nanoparticle catalysts. Congrats! Press release with more info here.

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September 16, 2019 - Our collaborative paper with the Kofinas lab on self-assembly of nanoparticle hydrogels was published in Nanoscale. Congrats! See the paper here.

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September 1, 2019 - Shakiba's paper on protein aggregation has been published in Colloid Journal. Congrats! See the paper here. 

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August 20, 2019 - Shakiba has received a GAANN fellowship from the Department of Education to support her Ph.D. work over the next year. Congrats!

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August 3, 2019 - Mei's paper on heterogeneous nucleation has been accepted to the Journal of the American Chemical Society! Congrats! Check out the preprint here. Press release here.

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August 3, 2019 - Dr. Woehl, Mei, and Umesha will travel to Portland, OR for the Microscopy & Microanalysis conference.

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July 25, 2019 - See the press release for Nina and Nathan's Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences paper here.

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July 23, 2019 - We have received funding from the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) program to develop chemical sensors for in situ electron microscopy. Thanks to TEDCO and the State of Maryland for the support!

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May 3, 2019 - Nina and Nathan's paper on using interferometry to sense protein aggregates in biologics was just accepted to the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Congrats to all the authors! Link.

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April 22, 2019 - Mei receives the best poster award from the Engineering Sustainability Day poster session. Congrats!

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April 12, 2019 - Dr. Woehl will travel to MRS in Phoenix, AZ to give a talk in the "Design and In Situ TEM Characterization of Self-Assembling Colloidal Nanosystems" symposium on April 24.

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February 18, 2019 - Nathan received an ASPIRE scholarship to support his research on interferometric scattering of protein aggregates this semester. Congrats!

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January 17, 2019 - Mei receives a Sengers travel award to travel to the Microscopy & Microanalysis conference in Portland this summer. Congrats!

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November 19, 2018 - Dr. Woehl gives a talk with collaborator Marc Taraban (UMD, Pharmaceutical Sciences) at the 11th annual UMCP-UMB Joint Innovation Seed Grant Symposium. See the article about the event here.

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October 24, 2018 - Mei's paper on electron beam nanochemistry of silver nanocrystal formation is accepted to Chemistry of Materials. Congrats! See the article here and the press release here.

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October 11, 2018 - Dr. Woehl travels to Saarbrucken, Germany to give a talk at the 4th International Conference on In-Situ and Correlative Electron Microscopy. Many thanks to Niels, Damien, and Kristian for the invitation to speak.

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May 6, 2018 - Adam's paper on directly visualizing plasmonic nanoparticle assembly in electric fields was accepted to Langmuir. Congrats! See the paper here.

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April 24, 2018 - Our book chapter with Dr. Patricia Abellan at SuperSTEM was just published in the 7th volume of In-situ Characterization Techniques for Nanomaterials. Congrats! Link

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February 28, 2018 - Adam received the outstanding ASPIRE student research award for his research done last summer on plasmonic nanoparticle assembly in electric fields. Congrats! 

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December 16, 2017 - Our lab received funding through the Maryland Industrial Partnerships Program (MIPS) to work with Pixelligent in Baltimore on a 2 yr project to characterize and improve colloidal stability of polymer-nanocrystal composite inks for LED lighting. Congrats! Check out the article on the ChBE website here.

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October 8, 2017 - Nina, an undergraduate researcher in our lab, was recently profiled by the College of Engineering, check out her profile here.

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September 21, 2017 - Check out the new UMD ChBE newsletter, Columns, which features a highlight of our labs exciting research on nanomaterials and biopharmaceuticals. 

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August 20, 2017 - We received funding from the UMD-UMB seed grant to work on imaging protein aggregates with liquid cell electron microscopy. Congrats!

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June 17, 2017 - We are facilitating an outreach activity for the UMD College of Engineering Stepping Stones summer camp for middle school students interested in engineering. See more information here.

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June 17, 2017 - Microscopy & Microanalysis in St. Louis this year is coming up on August 2! Dr. Woehl will give an invited talk and organize a workshop on Understanding Radiation Beam-Damage.

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June 26, 2017 - Our lab won a DOE User Proposal grant to work with our collaborator Ray Unocic at Oak National Lab to investigate nucleation mechanisms with liquid cell electron microscopy. Mei and Dr Woehl will be traveling to ORNL this coming academic year to do experiments. Congrats!

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June 16, 2017 - Sushanth Gupta and Kingsley Ojibeka join our lab as high school students from Montgomery Blair High School and Eleanor Roosevelt High School to do summer research internships. Welcome!

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May 30, 2017 - Our lab received funding for our electrocatalyst and in situ TEM research from the Ralph E. Powe faculty enhancement award. Congrats! See ORAU article here and UMD article here.

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May 23, 2017 - Our lab received funding from the Minta Martin award for research on in situ TEM and bimetallic nanoparticle catalysts. Congrats!

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May 5, 2017 - Kingsley Ojibeka will join our lab for the summer and upcoming year as a high school senior from Eleanor Roosevelt High School just down the road. He will be researching electric field induced colloidal assembly. Welcome!

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March 17, 2017 - See the press release on Mei's Harry K Wells fellowship here.

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February 22, 2017 - Mei received the Harry K. Wells Fellowship through the University of Maryland Energy Research Center for her work on in operando TEM characterization of electrocatalyst stability. Congrats Mei!

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February 21,2017 - Our book chapter titled "Liquid Cell Electron Microscopy for the Study of Growth Dynamics of Nanomaterials and Structure of Soft Matter" co-written with collaborator Patricia Abellan at SuperSTEM has been accepted for publication in the upcoming volume of Springer In Situ Nanomaterials Characterization.

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February 2, 2017 - Nina Uchida (B.S. candidate) and Shakiba Nikfarjam (M.E. candidate) have joined our lab to research aggregation and stability of biopharmaceuticals. Welcome!

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January 24, 2017 - Mei Wang has joined the lab as a Ph.D. student. She will be working on an electrocatalysis project, synthesizing bimetallic nanoparticles in the transmission electron microscope to investigate effects of mesoscale properties on electrocatalytic activity and durability.

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December 5, 2016, Our invited review article co-authored with collaborator Patricia Abellan at SuperSTEM, titled "Defining the radiation chemistry during liquid cell electron microscopy to enable visualization of nanomaterial growth and degradation dynamics," was published in the Journal of Microscopy today! Link.

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December 1, 2016 - Prof. Woehl  received research support from the University of Maryland Research and Scholarship Award (RASA) program for research on stability of metallic electrocatalyst nanomaterials.

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