Personnel

Dr. Michael Keidar is A. James Clark Professor of Engineering. His research concerns advanced spacecraft propulsion, plasma-based nanotechnology, and plasma medicine. He has authored over 240 journal articles and author of textbook “Plasma Engineering: from Aerospace and Nano and Bio technology” (Elsevier, March 2013). He received 2017 Davidson award in plasma physics. In 2016 he was elected AIAA National Capital Section Engineer of the Year and in 2017 he received AIAA Engineer of the Year award for his work on micropropulsion resulted in successful launch of nanosatellite with thrusters developed by his laboratory. Many of his papers have been featured on the cover of high impact journals and his research has been covered by various media outlets. Prof. Keidar serves as an AIP Advances academic editor, Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions in Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences and member of editorial board of half dozen of journals. He is Fellow of APS and Associate Fellow of AIAA.

Irina Schweigert is a research scientist at MpNL and the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics SB RAS in Novosibirsk, Russia. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics from the Novosibirsk State University in 1981. She also received a Ph.D. in physics and mathematics in 1990. She has authored more than 90 scientific papers in major peer-reviewed journals, with over 70 first authorship in these publications. Her current research activity includes multidimensional simulations of all types of discharge plasmas in magnetic fields with kinetic effects. She is the creator and principal developer of 2D3V Particle-in-cell Monte Carlo algorithm code and 1D and 2D combined fluid codes (PIC+fluid) for discharge plasma simulations.

Carles Corbella got in 2006 his PhD in Applied Physics at the University of Barcelona, Spain. The topic was diamond-like carbon (DLC) and metal-DLC nanocomposite coatings grown by pulsed plasma techniques. In the meantime, he worked as research assistant in the sputtering laboratory of the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC). Next, Dr. Corbella performed a postdoctoral stage at the Fraunhofer IST in Braunschweig, Germany, to study the physics behind industrial-scale plasma reactors. In 2008, back in the Barcelona University, he investigated different paths to tune the surface properties of DLC-based films in view of their application as nanoimprint moulds. In the period 2011-2018, he worked as scientific researcher in the Reactive Plasmas Group (Experimentalphysik II) at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. There, he studied elementary interactions between plasmas and surfaces by means of particle beam experiments to model surface processes in magnetized pulsed plasmas. Since April 2018, Dr. Corbella is appointed postdoctoral researcher at the Micropropulsion and Nanotechnology Laboratory to investigate the synthesis of nanomaterials by anodic arc discharge.

Dr. Denis B. Zolotukhin is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The George Washington University, and Research Fellow in the Department of Physics at Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics in Russia. In 2016, he received his PhD under the supervision of Professor Efim M. Oks at the Institute of High Current Electronics in the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include plasma-cathode electron and ion sources, plasma diagnostics, plasma chemistry, deposition of coatings, and plasma propulsion. Denis is a co-author of more than 15 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, including 5 articles in which he has first authorship ( as of September 2017). He is a recipient of several prestigious scholarships of President of Russian Federation. In 2016, his research group in Tomsk was named "Leading Research Group of the Russian Federation".

Dr. Dayun Yan grew up in Xiaogan, Hubei Province, China. He obtained his M.S degree (Mechanical Engineering) from Tsinghua University in China with an " Excellent Masters Dissertation" award. He got Ph.D. degree (Mechanical Engineering) at the George Washington University in 2016 under the supervision of Dr. Keidar. Currently, Dayun was a postdoctoral scientist with Dr. Keidar. His research focuses on several core problems in plasma medicine, such as the activation phenomenon during the direct cold plasma effect on cancer cells and the role of physical factors in plasma medicine. These studies may change some basic understanding of plasma medicine. He also interests in some basic problems in plasma devices and plasma physics, which facilitate the realization of a self-adaptive plasma platform. He was selected as a discussion leader at the Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) and as a session chair at the International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS). Dayun has published more than 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals (20 with the first authorship). In addition, he services as a peer-reviewer for 40 international journals. His papers own about 700 citations on Google Scholar in 4 years. He is also a co-author of a new book, Cold Plasma Cancer Therapy (in press).

Ram received his Master’s degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from The George Washington University in the Spring of 2017. His research focuses on increasing thrust to power ratio of the two stage micro-cathode thruster by using the Hall effect to direct momentum of ions.

Keir’s current research focuses on enhancing the MicroCathode Arc Thrusters (uCAT) that can be used on CubeSats. Prior to this, Keir received a dual bachelors in physics and finance from Columbia University as well as a bachelors in biology from Pace University. He has also published his findings from research at Cornell University in Neuropharmacology and holds a patent pending on a wheel with a variable radius and tread firmness. Keir is a veteran, having served in the U.S. Coast Guard as an engineer and boarding officer, and has been a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) as well as the New York Science Academy. In addition to his research at George Washington University, Keir currently works part-time at BlackRock in financial risk analysis.

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 for investigating disease progression in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). In her PhD research, Eda is investigating adaptive properties of plasma and their role in tailoring plasma doses to treat cancers at various disease stages.

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.

Andrea is an MD candidate at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She graduated with honors from the University of California, San Diego in Biochemistry and Cell Biology, specializing in Neuroscience and Molecular Genetics. Her undergraduate research focused on Huntington’s Disease with Albert R. La Spada, MD, PhD, ALS with Don W. Cleveland, PhD, and Glioblastoma with Joan Heller Brown, PhD. Andrea has given lectures, published, and presented research in neurodegeneration, neuro-oncology, and neurosurgery and is working towards a career in academic surgical neuro-oncology. Her current work with Jonathan Sherman, MD and Michael Keidar, PhD involves the study of the use of cold atmospheric plasma in conjunction with chemotherapy and immunotherapy.

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.

Vikas is a Ph.D. candidate studying plasma medicine in vitro and in vivo. Vikas graduated with a master’s degree in biochemistry, cellular & molecular biology from Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) with an excellence-in-science internship award, best research award and the best poster of the 2014-2015 academic calendar year. Also at GUMC, Vikas studied the molecular mechanism of neuro-degeneration, pathological basis of cancer and structural biology . There, he obtained excellence awards for his thesis and project on the pathological basis of cancer and structural biology of KRAS proteins in pancreatic cancer. After graduating, Vikas continued his research on a high-profile project at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health. He also worked at GUMC and was a key person on a collaborative project between GUMC, MIT, and a biotechnology company named Trevigen. For this project, he developed a high-throughput assay to detect DNA damage in skin cancer types like melanoma and basal cell carcinoma and was responsible for obtaining grants for the organization. After gaining some experience, he started his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts and topped the university with honors and a GPA of 4.0. He is now continuing his Ph.D. under Dr. Keidar investigating mechanisms to make plasma adaptive to treat different types of cancer.

Xiaoliang is a Ph.D. candidate focusing on plasma medicine. He received his BS from the University of Delaware in chemical and biomolecular engineering, and MS from the George Washington University in biomedical engineering. In 2015, he worked with professor Antony N Beris at University of Delaware on drag reducing agent research. In 2017, he joined professor Lijie Grace Zhang's lab and focused on 4D printing of polymeric materials for tissue and organ regeneration.