Lab/Research Manager
- Office:
- E237
Background
Kamran is the new Lab/Research Manager for President Alivisatos’ research group at James Frank Institute (JFI) in the University of Chicago.
He received his Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) from the Institute of Functional Nano-Materials at the University of Ulm in Germany (2012). He also graduated from the interdisciplinary M.Sc. program in Advanced Materials (Nano-Materials) there, after receiving his B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Science and Technology in Tehran. He served as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the University of Wisconsin (UW-Madison) through a joint position at the departments of Chemical and Biological Engineering (CBE), Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). While at UW he was the Lab Manager for Prof. Thomas Kuech and serving on the Executive Board of UW-MRSEC.
Dr. Forghani’s interdisciplinary research interests include (but not limited to): defects management in semiconductors, opto-electronic materials/devices such as solar cells, LEDs, Lasers and Detectors, epitaxial crystal growth as well as synthesis of nanostructures, and in-situ real-time characterization of nano-structures/interfaces and correlations with ex-situ characteristics.
He has more than 10 years of work experience in academia and industry, doing R/R&D and Research Management. He has served on numerous R&D projects as the PI, Project Manager or Scientist with funding from NASA and DOE, and DOD.
He was the Technical Lead at Novinoor LLC; a company focused on commercializing novel 3D sensing solutions based on quantum devices. Prior to joining JFI, he was at Northwestern University, leading the research on quantum devices for high-speed light modulators with funding from DoD. Dr Forghani was also senior member of the R&D team at MicroLink Devices Inc., contributing to the programs that resulted in demonstration and production of the most efficient solar cells ever created (highest W/m2 & W/kg), suitable for airplanes (solar-electric propulsion), Satellites, and Mars/Lunar Exploration missions. He was also the co-founder of NanoSystems Laboratory LLC, a startup dedicated to marrying the lab-grown Diamond technology developed at Argonne National Lab with emerging GaN semiconductor technology to realize the most efficient transistor systems for electric-cars and 5G/6G telecom. Dr. Forghani used to be an educator, and still volunteers for outreach activities to communicated cutting edge research concepts to K-12 students, to share the joy of learning with the public, and hopefully to inspire more (under-represented) students to choose an education/career path focused on creating the next-gen solutions.