Eugene P. Wigner Fellow Michael Naguib
Ph.D. student Michael Naguib (advisors: Michel Barsoum and Yury Gogotsi) has been named a Eugene P. Wigner Fellow.
The highly competitive Eugene P. Wigner Fellowship is the most prestigious fellowship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Named for Eugene P. Wigner, Nobel Laureate and first Director of Research and Development at ORNL, the fellowship exists to attract recent Ph.D. graduates to ORNL and encourage these scientists to flourish in their fields while contributing to ORNL and the U.S. Department of Energy’s missions and goals. Starting in May, Naguib will join the more than 70 Wigner Fellows since its inception in 1975.
As Wigner Fellow, Naguib will be working on understanding the effect of surface termination and electronic structure on the electrochemical properties of two-dimensional transition metal based materials including MXenes, a material that Naguib helped to develop during his Ph.D. at Drexel, and oxides. Based on this understanding, Naguib will identify a design approach to enhance the performance of lithium-ion battery electrodes.
ORNL is the largest DOE laboratory and only selects two to three Wigner Fellows per year. The fellowship lasts for a two-year term, at which point Naguib will have the option of continuing his work at ORNL.