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- President Abraham Harris Chaired Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. Founding Director of NUANCE Center.
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Northwestern Hooding Ceremony 2025

Jun 16, 2025

On June 16th, 2025, two VPD group members walked the stage at the Welsh-Ryan Arena to be hooded as PhD graduates. Professor Vinayak Dravid did the honor of hooding his students on this momentous occasion. During their time at Northwestern, Dr. Ben Shindel focused his research on the synthesis of novel nanocomposites and the study of their applications in environmental remediation while Dr. Yukun Liu primarily focused his studies on optimizing properties of thermoelectric materials and used electron microscopy to investigate the relation between nanostructures and their effects on the electron conduction and phonon scattering mechanisms.

Congratulations to you both!

Left to right: Yukun, Vinayak and Ben