I grew up in Montclair, NJ, and went to college in New York City before coming out to UCSB for grad school. I miss the music, art, architecture, and cynicism of NYC, but love the majestic landscapes, fresh produce, and fun-loving spirit of Santa Barbara. When I'm not in the lab, I am cooking, reading, hiking, making/playing/listening to music, or doing yoga.

Barnard College 2009 (Chemistry)

In college, I had my first research experience at Barnard College synthesizing organic molecules that were possible products of reactions with strained carbenes, in order to elucidate the mechanism of these reactions. In my last year of college, I joined a research group at Columbia University, where I first started working on organic photovoltaics. I synthesized carbon nanotube mats in order to develop new transparent electrodes for OPVs.

In the Nguyen Group, I characterize organic solar cells using techniques such as photoconducting atomic force microscopy (pc-AFM) in order understand how nanoscale morphology can influence bulk device performance. When we identify morphological features that either benefit or undermine device performance, we can tune our materials and processing conditions to produce devices with more or less of these features and develop more efficient solar cells. I am also interested in developing non-fullerene acceptor materials for OPVs.

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michele-guide/48/980/b81

Google Scholar page: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pTbzhBYAAAAJ&hl=en