Michael Keidar is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The George Washington University. He is Director of The George Washington Institute for Nanotechnology a consortium of laboratories which includes the MpNL. Michael is a Senior Member of The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and a founding member of the International Society of Plasma Medicine (ISPM), and a member of AIAA Electric Propulsion Technical Committee (EP). Michael's research interests include plasma propulsion, plasma-based nanotechnology and plasma biomedicine. He has authored over 130 journal papers, co-author of a book on plasma engineering and holds five patents.

 

Dr. Yan  received his masters degree from Tsinghua University in China. At Tsinghua, he obtained the excellent masters dissertation prize, which is the highest academic award given to a masters student at Tsinghua (awarded to less than 4% of masters student). He obtained his Ph.D. degree at the George Washington University in the spring of 2016 in Dr. Keidar's research group, with a of GPA 3.95.

He started his postdoctoral training with Dr. Keidar in August of 2016. He has been working to solve the core problems of the interaction between cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) and cells in vitro and in vivo, the specific vulnerability of cells to CAP, the selective anti-cancer mechanism of CAP, the physical foundation of CAP, as well as developing cold plasma devices based on the novel understanding on plasma physics and chemistry.

He has been researching methods which fundamentally change our basic understanding of several phenomena in plasma medicine. Recently, he has discovered the cell-based H2O2 generation during the CAP treatment, which is his largest contribution to plasma medicine so far. This discovery completely changes the previous understanding of the effect that CAP has on cells. This discovery may also facilitate the realization of adaptive CAP devices. In addition, he has also conducted pioneering research on CAP-stimulated solutions during past three years.

As of May 2017, he has published 14 peer-reviewed papers in international journals (average IF>3) with first authorship. He is also the coauthor of another 7 papers. He has about 260 citations with an H index of 9 (google scholar). He has been a peer-reviewers of about 30 papers from 14 peer-reviewed journals. He was selected as the discussion leader of the Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) for plasma processing science in 2016. He has given several presentations at prestigious conferences about CAP and plasma medicine.

Zhitong researches cold atmospheric plasma (CAP). CAP has shown significantly potential for various biomedical applications. Currently, CAP is mainly directly used to irradiate cancer cells or tissue, while CAP devices are not available for specific conditions. Therefore, the plasma produced in water can be injected into tissues for cancer treatment to fit specific conditions.

Eda graduated from the University of Southern Maine in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. Her undergraduate research focused on chemical synthesis of fluorescent organometallic compounds with potential applications as biochemiosensor.

Prior to attending graduate school, she worked in R&D at IDEXX laboratories re-designing immunological assays for disease detection in domestic animals. In 2012, she joined Dr. Samia Khoury’s laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Her project focused on developing biomarkers to investigate disease progression in Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

In her PhD research, Eda is investigating the adaptive properties of plasma and their role in tailoring plasma doses to treat different cancers and diseases.

Samantha Hurley is a PhD candidate focusing in MicroCathode Arc Thruster (µCAT). She received her BS and MS from The George Washington University in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. In addition, she is a PATHWAYS intern at NASA Goddard working for the Satellite Servicing and Capabilities Office.

She is designing a linear actuator system; this is a new version of the µCAT. The system replaces the spring-feed mechanism with a stepper motor to feed the cathode forward as it ablates. The motivation behind this change is that a longer cathode can be used in order to increase lifetime, there will be precision feeding via step control, an increase to the thrust over power ratio, and a magnetic coil is not necessary omitting any possibility of unwanted torque or interference with the satellite.

She is also working on a plasma cutter to cut through MLI blanketing on orbit. A high-powered µCAT is used. The plume cuts each of the 12 layers of the blanket for access to damaged parts that are covered by the material.

Sungrae received his Master’s degree in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from The George Washington University. His research was focused on design of air-breathing hall-effect thrusters.

As a PhD student, Sungrae is continuing his research of air-breathing hall-effect thrusters that could one day be used in the Martian atmosphere.

Jonathan is working on a design of a micro-Newton thrust balance. This device will allow the team to fully characterize the µCAT device. He is also designing a next generation µCAT with ablatable anodes.

Li's research area is the physics of plasma. He is researching the behavior of cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) jet under different conditions. For example, He is examining how a CAP jet is affected by external electric fields, magnetic fields, and how it interacts with other objects such as nano particles.

In a recent experiment, Li studied the CAP jet in an axial DC electric field. The electric field was generated by applying varying values of electric potential to a copper ring. Regarding plasma diagnostics, Li measured several quantities: (1) the electron density was measured using the Rayleigh Microwave Scattering (RMS) method, (2) the plasma bullet behavior was observed using an Intensified Charged-Coupled Device (ICCD) camera, and (3) the chemical species in the jet were identified by analyzing the jet spectra using a spectrometer.

Luis received his Master’s degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from The George Washington University in the Spring of 2016.

He is currently building algorithms that can used to characterize plasmas found in vacuum arc-discharges, as well as those found in atmospheric conditions. Luis focuses on plasma physics theory and computational fluid dynamics simulations.