2015-2016 Cluster Fellows

Boya Cui

Department/Program: Applied Physics

Faculty Advisor: Matthew Grayson, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Status of Studies: Fourth year

What is your area of focus at Northwestern?

My research focuses on the thermal and electrical transport in energy management materials. These thin-film materials I study range from thermoelectrics which convert waste heat into electricity, to metal organic frameworks that adsorb gases in the nano-scale pores and are promising candidate for fuel storage applications.

Brief personal history:

I grew up in Lanzhou, a city in Northwestern China, and then pursued my BS degree in Xiamen University in the Southeast. I spent a period of time doing research on solar cells based on heterstructure coaxial nanowire arrays. In the middle of my undergrad, I studied in National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan as an exchange student, when my horizon was greatly broadened and I was determined to study abroad for graduate school afterwards.

Why were you interested in becoming a Cluster Fellow?

The Cluster Fellowship gathers people from diverse backgrounds together, and exposes me to knowledge outside the engineering field. Also, becoming a Culster Fellow can provide a larger-scale view of energy issue and make me think outside of the box, instead of only digging at a specific tiny spot in my research. 

Daniel Garcia

Department/Program: Chemical and Biological Engineering

Faculty Advisor: Fengqi You, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Status of Studies: Third Year

What is your area of focus at Northwestern?

I am constructing a sustainability optimization framework for industrial process and supply chain design that takes into account economic, environmental, and social objectives. 

Brief personal history:

I was born in Nevada, but I consider myself from Nashville, Tennessee. I co-founded two clean-tech start-ups as an undergrad in St. Louis, and this experience compelled me to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering.

Why were you interested in becoming a Cluster Fellow?

Finding sustainable solutions that are pragmatic, practical, and realizable is my ultimate professional goal and is the heart of my research project. The Cluster Fellowship allowed me to expand my graduate research on sustainability into business (NUVention) and science (Earth Science climate change courses) realms.

Updates: 

I actually did just start a new job this past April after I graduated in March. I'm now an Advanced Researcher in the Life Cycle Assessment and Optimization research group at ExxonMobil. My job is to guide new process designs and refinery configuration/operations to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. I won the American Institute of Chemical Engineering's (AIChE) 2018 Sustainable Engineering Forum's student paper award last year. I was also awarded an NU Presidential Fellowship from 2017-2019. You can see my papers on my Google Scholar; the most recent one published a few months ago was about modeling and optimizing a bioenergy supply chain's impact on the ecological health of a region.

Luke Liu

Department/Program: Business Administration

Status of Studies:  Second Year MBA Candidate

What is your area of focus at Northwestern?

I came to Kellogg to study marketing and strategy, but have recently focused on supply chain and entrepreneurship. I hope to utilize my finance and strategy background to help create more efficient methods of deploying distributed energy resources, particularly in the C&I sector or off-grid markets.  

Brief personal history:

I grew up in Boston and attended college in New York where I studied economics and mathematics. Prior to Kellogg, I worked in the financial services industry in a private equity/investing role. Last summer, I worked in the corporate strategy group of a major manufacturing company focusing on their solar module and energy storage strategy.

Why were you interested in becoming a Cluster Fellow?

We’re at the cusp of scientific advances in solar materials, energy storage, and other fields that will lead to further cost reductions and new opportunities. These new technologies will only achieve widespread through financing or business model innovation. I think the Cluster Fellowship program helps teach business students like myself to better collaborate with students from engineering, law, and other fields to help drive these changes in energy.