2024 Professor Joe Greene Postdoctoral Fellows Named

Professor Joe Greene was renowned for his enduring impact and dedication to fostering the careers of young scientists and emerging leaders in the fields of materials science engineering, basic science, and applied technology. That dedication continues in his memory.

Written by Lauren Laws

Two candidates have been named as the first cohort of the Professor Joe Greene Postdoctoral Fellowship: Jennifer Freedberg of the University of Minnesota and Arghya Patra of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Professor Joe Greene (Dr. J.E. Greene) was a distinguished faculty member in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a former director of The Materials Research Laboratory. These prestigious fellowships, created in his memory and honor thanks to an endowment created by his wife of 55 years, Phyllis Greene, are designed to support outstanding early-career scientists and engineers specializing in Materials Science, Physics, Chemistry, and related fields. Freedberg and Patra will initially be appointed as full-time Postdoctoral Research Associates for one year, with the option of a second year.

More information on this fellowship, including how to apply, can be found here. 

Jennifer Freedberg
Advisor: Prof. Fahad Mahmood

I am very honored to have been selected as one of the first Professor Joe Greene Fellows. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to meet him, but as I was reading about the reason this fellowship was established, I was inspired that Professor Joe Greene not only had a prolific career in physics and material science, but that he went out of his way to be a mentor for more junior members of the community. I have been fortunate to have many mentors helping my development as a scientist, and I hope to further Professor Joe Greene’s legacy of mentoring students and young scientists throughout my career.

I studied out-of-equilibrium effects in spin glasses during my PhD, and something I really liked about my research was utilizing these dynamics to uncover the behavior of the spin glass state. In my postdoctoral research in the Mahmood lab, I will be studying dynamics at the femtosecond timescale by watching the return to equilibrium after a perturbation. This will allow us to glean information about collective behavior in condensed matter systems, whether for spin glasses, quantum spin liquid candidates, or unconventional superconductors.

Arghya Patra
Advisor: Prof. Paul Braun

I have always been deeply influenced by Prof. Greene's rich body of work on thin film materials science and my current work on thick textured ceramic oxide films is a continuation of his core engineering vision.

My research focuses on developing an electrochemical manufacturing technique for growing ceramic oxide electrodes for electrochemical energy storage applications. Such electrodes are endowed with unprecedented improvements in volumetric energy density and serve as a paradigm shift redefining the manufacture and design of battery electrodes.