A faculty promotion and a new assistant professor - PATT
Clémence Corminboeuf and Wendy Queen
At its September session the ETH Board nominated two professors at the School of Basic Sciences. Professor Clémence Corminboeuf has been promoted to Associate Professor from the 1st of October 2014, and Dr Wendy Queen has been appointed Tenure Track Assistant Professor - PATT from the 1st of May 2015.
Professor Clémence Corminboeuf, currently Tenure Track Assistant Professor has been promoted to Associate Professor of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, School of Basic Sciences (SB).
Clemence Corminboeuf conducts research on modeling precursor organic molecules of pi-conjugated materials. These organic semiconductors have unique properties for the design of solar cells, diodes and transistors. They represent an attractive alternative to inorganic analogues.
The optimization of these systems at the molecular level is essential for obtaining new materials with increased mobility for load carriers. The team of Clemence Corminboeuf will focus on the development and application of new computational methods to describe and rationalize the properties of organic materials. Although the simulation on a macroscopic scale is a complex issue, the development of new approaches based on the dynamics of charge carriers in molecular assemblies should contribute to the design of high performance materials.
Dr Wendy Queen, at present Scientist at "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory" (USA), is named Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, School of Basic Sciences (SB) – EPFL Valais Wallis in Sion.
Wendy Queen offers a highly innovative approach to the design and production of hybrid organic/inorganic materials for applications in the field of separating gas mixtures, the storage of small molecular entities and catalysis. Based on the systematic study of molecular factors and conditions influencing the crystallization properties of metal-organic materials, her research program aims to create a comprehensive platform for design, synthesis and characterization of porous materials capture.
Of particular interest among her proposed projects are the production of hybrid materials with controlled crystallization and the study of interactions between hybrid materials and “host” molecules.
These projects, combining materials engineering and characterization techniques by electron microscopy, spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, bring a research platform dedicated to the development of new hybrid materials to the EPFL Valais Wallis campus.