I was born in Jerusalem, Israel where I grew up until I turned 16. From Israel I moved to Massachusetts, where I completed the last two years of high school and my undergraduate studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As a starting freshman I thought I wanted to complete a bachelors degree in dance, but instead I completed a degree in chemical engineering. From there I moved on to warmer and better at UCSB where I work with Prof. Quyen Nguyen studying solution-processed organic solar cells.

BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2010

While at UMass I worked with Prof. Alejandro Briseño from the Polymer Science and Engineering department. In Prof. Briseño's lab I grew organic semiconductor crystals from solution and vapor with the purpose of selectively controlling their shape and size for fundamental studies of charge transport in single crystalline organic electronic devices.

With Prof. Nguyen I am studying the charge transfer state (CTS) and luminescence from organic solar cells. The CTS is an electronic state formed due to the mixing of the donor and acceptor materials. When an excited state (exciton) separates into free charge carriers to be collected at the electrodes, it is thought that it first has to go through the charge transfer state. The CTS can also be a site for free charge carriers to recombine and be lost. We probe and study the CTS through photophysical transitions that occur in bulk heterjunction blends.