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 in 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
Associate Professor, Department of Physics
217 Olin Physics Laboratory
(336) 758 4407
jurchescu@wfu.edu
Prof. Jurchescu is the Denton Family Fellow and oversees the research activities of CFM. She received her PhD from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and was a post-doctoral 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 a member of the executive committee of the Division of Materials Research within APS and of the editorial boards of Scientific Reports (Nature publishing group) and J. Phys. Materials (IOP Publishing).
Prof. Mark Welker
William L. Poteat Professor of Chemistry
3811 Wake Downtown
(336) 702 1953
welker@wfu.edu
Prof. Welker is the William L. Poteat Professor of Chemistry and oversees the educational aspects of CFM. He obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry with Highest Honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Florida State University. He was a NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley. He also holds joint academic appointments in the Departments of Biochemistry, Cancer Biology, and the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Wake Forest School of Medicine. In 2008, he was elected a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Prof. Michael Gross
Associate Professor, Department of Engineering
4512 Wake Downtown
(336) 702 1969
grossmd@wfu.edu
Prof. Gross is a Founding Faculty member of the Department of Engineering and oversees the outreach activities of CFM. He received his undergraduate degree at Bucknell University in Chemical Engineering and graduate degrees at the University of Pennsylvania in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. He received the NSF CAREER Award, Marcus A. Grossman Young Author Award, and the TMS Extraction & Processing Research Award. His research is funded by the NSF, DOE, and ACS-PRF. He has over 40 publications and primarily researches materials processing and electrode engineering for energy applications.