In March 2023, the department of materials science and engineering welcomed Anne Stevens Assistant Professor Jill Wenderott, PhD to the faculty.
Jill completed her B.S. in Physics at the University of Kansas before receiving her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. After completing her PhD, she was a postdoc in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University and subsequently a postdoctoral appointee at Argonne National Laboratory in the Materials Science Division. Jill served as President of the Association for Women in Science – Chicago Area Chapter (AWIS-CAC) from 2020-2022. She was also part of an international team awarded the 2020 American Physical Society Innovation Fund to support their organization, Women Supporting Women in the Sciences (WS2). Over the past 2 years, the group has distributed low-cost physics and materials science lab kits that have reached over 4000 primary and secondary-level students across East Africa.
Jill was brought on as part of a College of Engineering strategic cluster hire designed to recruit highly interdisciplinary faculty who will catalyze collaboration across departments and colleges to address global issues around the themes of energy and sustainability; smart, integrated cities; and health, wellness, and medicine.
Her research experiences and interests include syntheses of functional inorganic materials, thin film deposition and processing of inorganic and hybrid materials, in situ X-ray scattering techniques, scanning probe microscopy, (photo)(electro)catalysis, and microelectronics. Her research group at Drexel – the Functional Inorganic Materials Synthesis Laboratory - will focus on the realization of inorganic and hybrid materials for energy and environmental applications.