Researchers at Tufts Epsilon Materials Institute are driven to address the urgent global challenge of creating cleaner, safer, and more sustainable energy solutions.
They are committed to serving as a model for how academic discovery translates into tangible, real-world solutions. By blending cross-disciplinary expertise from across the university, our researchers are not only solving today’s problems but also educating the workforce that will lead the clean energy transition for decades to come.
Faculty Fellows
Matthew Panzer
Interim Director, Tufts Epsilon Materials Institute
Dean of Research, School of Engineering
Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
The Panzer group seeks a deeper understanding of how solution-processed materials, including nonvolatile and flexible ionic liquid-based gel electrolytes in particular, can be effectively designed and incorporated into novel electrochemical devices for the efficient storage and responsible use of electrical energy.
Ayse Asatekin
Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Asatekin leads the Smart Polymers, Membranes, and Separations Laboratory. The group designs novel membranes for water treatment, removal pollutants, small molecule separations, and energy-efficient smart filtration processes. The lab also works on novel polymers for energy storage applications.
Prashant Deshlahra
Associate Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
The Deshlahra Lab develops new catalysts for efficient and sustainable production of fuels and chemicals via fundamental understanding of reaction mechanisms and structure-function and composition-function relations. They combine experimental and computational approaches to develop such relations.
Graham Leverick
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
The Leverick Lab explores electrochemical solutions to the grand challenge of climate change. Their research focuses on exploiting the properties of liquid, molten salt and polymer electrolytes to enhance the performance of electrochemical devices like batteries, fuel cells, and electrolyzers.
Fiorenzo Omenetto
Frank C. Doble Professor in Engineering, Biomedical Engineering
Omenetto's research group, The Silklab, studies the convergence of technology, biologically inspired materials, and the natural sciences with an emphasis on new transformative approaches for sustainable materials for high-technology applications. He has proposed and pioneered the use of silk as a material platform for advanced technology with uses in photonics, optoelectronics, and nanotechnology applications.
Paul Simmonds
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Simmonds leads the Quantum Nanomaterials Lab, which studies the convergence between electrical engineering, condensed matter physics, and materials science. A key tool in his work is molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), an advanced technique for growing ultrapure semiconductor crystals with atomic-level control over nanomaterial size.