Core Members
The CFM was conceived of and proposed by four core members in 2017. These core members now govern the center and oversee all efforts to implement its mission. The center core is managed by the center director, who—in turn—reports to the Provost and the Associate Provost for Research.
Prof. Timo Thonhauser, Director
Wright Family Professor of Physics
303A Olin Physical Laboratory
336.758.3991
cfm@wfu.edu
Prof. Thonhauser received his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the Karl-Franzens-Universität in Austria and held post-doctoral appointments at The Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers, and MIT. Prof. Thonhauser received the NSF CAREER award and was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Simons Fellow, and a KITP Scholar. He was named the Wright Family Professor in Physics and had a courtesy appointment as Associate Prof. in Chemistry at MIT. His research is funded by the NSF, DOE, Army, ORNL, the Simons Foundation, and private companies. He has over 100 publications and is an internationally recognized expert on materials modeling.
Prof. Oana Jurchescu
Baker Professor of Physics
217 Olin Physics Laboratory
336.758.4407
jurchescu@wfu.edu
Prof. Jurchescu received her PhD in 2006 from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and was a postdoctoral researcher at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD. Her expertise is in charge transport in organic semiconductors, device physics, and structure-property relationships in organic and hybrid functional materials. She won the NSF CAREER award, several teaching and mentoring awards, the WFU Award for Excellence in Research and the Wake Forest Innovation award. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Materials Chemistry C and Materials Advances (Royal Society of Chemistry) and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Chemical Physics Reviews (AIP Publishing), J. Phys. Materials (IOP Publishing) and Organic Electronics (Elsevier). She was elected to join the executive committee of the Division of Materials Research within APS.
Prof. Elham Ghadiri
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry
017A Salem Hall
336.758.3386
ghadire@wfu.edu
Her expertise is in ultrafast laser spectroscopy technique development. Nanomaterials synthesis and device fabrication for solar energy conversion, optoelectronics and bioelectronics, and time-resolved photochemical processes in functional materials including charge carrier processes. She won the NSF CAREER award in 2023. Her team consists of graduate and undergraduate students of WFU, collaborators within the WFU School of Medicine, and materials scientists within the CFM center and other universities.
Prof. Saami K. Yazdani
Associate Professor, Department of Engineering
455 Vine Street
336.702.1968
yazdanis@wfu.edu
Dr. Saami K. Yazdani is a highly proven scholar with a passion to teach and mentor. Dr. Yazdani is currently an Associate Professor within the Department of Engineering at Wake Forest University. Dr. Yazdani received his Bachelor of Science and Master’s degrees in Engineering Science and Mechanics from Virginia Tech. He received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Wake Forest University and performed his post-doctoral training at CVPath Institute. Dr. Yazdani’s main mission is to develop novel solutions to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease. His team employs a combination of traditional engineering approaches (solid mechanics and fluid mechanics), biological techniques (tissue engineering and physiology) and drug delivery (excipients, pharmacokinetics) to develop models to better understand the pathology of cardiovascular disease, characterize the failure of cardiovascular devices and develop new technology. His team consists of strong collaboration with engineers, biologists, clinicians and industry.