Principal Investigator
Dr. Xiaohu Xia has been an Assistant Professor at University of Central Florida (UCF) since May 2018. Prior to his appointment at UCF, he worked at Michigan Tech as an assistant professor during 2014-2018. He did his postdoctoral research at Georgia Institute of Technology (with Prof. Younan Xia) during 2012-2014. As of now, he has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals. His publications have been cited more than 6,000 times, with an h-index of 36.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Dr. Zheng Xi was born in Wuxi, China. He received his B.S. degree with honors in Materials Physics from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2013 and Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Brown University in 2018. His Ph.D. work was focused on the rational synthesis and tuning of nanoparticles and nanocomposites for electrocatalysis applications. He joined Prof. Xia’s group as a postdoctoral research fellow in July, 2018 and currently focuses on the synthesis and functionalization of noble metal based nanoparticles for bio-sensing and in-vitro diagnostics.
Graduate Students
Zhiyuan Wei was born in Laiwu, China. He received his B.S. degree in Optical Information Science and Technology from Shandong University (2016) and M.S. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from University of Colorado Boulder (2019). His M.S. research work was focused on the radiative cooling nanomaterials. He is currently pursuing his PhD study at the Department of Chemistry, University of Central Florida, under the supervision of Dr. Xia. His research includes the synthesis of nanomaterials and exploration of their applications in biosensing and food safety.
Alexander Biby was born in Jupiter, Fl. He received his bachelors from UCF majoring in biology with a minor in chemistry (2020). Alex joined the Xia lab as an undergraduate in 2019 to assist in the synthesis and characterization of noble metal nanomaterials. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in chemistry at UCF under Dr. Xia. His research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of metallic nanostructures and their biomedical applications.
Weiwei Gao was born in Shijiazhuang, China. She received her B.S. in Biological Engineering (2016) form Northwest A&F University and her M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering (2019) form Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. Her M.S. thesis work was focus on the study of bismuth ferrite-barium titanate-based ceramics. Starting from Fall 2019, she was pursuing her Ph.D. degree in chemistry at UCF under the supervision of Dr. Xia. Her research focuses on the synthesis of functionalized nanomaterials for catalysis and bio-sensing.
Shikuan Shao was born in Wuxi, China. He received his B.E. degree in Chemical Engineering from Nanjing Tech University in 2014 and M.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from State University of New York – University at Buffalo in 2018. His M.S. thesis work was mainly focused on aerosol synthesis of graphene decorated silver nanostructures. He joined Prof. Xia’s group as a PhD student in September 2019. His research focuses on development and applications of plasmonic nanostructures.
Shu Li was born in Wuhan, China. He received his B.S. in Applied Chemistry from Huazhong Agricultural University in 2014 and M.S. from Auburn University, AL in 2018. He joined the Xia group in fall 2019 to pursue his Ph.D. degree in chemistry. His research interests include nanocrystal synthesis and in vitro diagnostics of disease biomarkers.
Tamar Yishay was born in Jerusalem, Israel. She received her B.S. degree with honors in Biochemistry and Biology from the University of Central Florida in 2020. Her undergraduate work focused on the development of split probe detection of the influenza A virus for improved diagnostics in a point of care setting. She is currently pursuing an M.S. in Nanotechnology at the University of Central Florida. She joined Dr. Xia’s group in Fall 2020 with a focus on disease biomarker detection with platinum-group metal nanoparticles.
Undergraduate Students
Kuryn MaGloire was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. However, she has lived in Orlando since 2004. She is currently pursuing an Undergraduate degree in Biomedical Sciences with a minor in Anthropology and Chemistry at UCF. She joined Dr. Xia’s research group in Fall 2018 to assist in the synthesis of nanomaterials under the supervision of Haihang (Alex) Ye and Dr. Xia himself.
Gary Burman is from Delray, Florida. He is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Science at the University of Central Florida while planning to pursue a graduate degree in Nanotechnology. He joined Dr. Xia’s research group to work on the functionalization and synthesis of nanoparticles for biosensing applications.
Shane Koo was raised in Miami, FL and entered the University of Central Florida in 2015 pursuing a degree in Biomedical sciences while minoring in business administration. Hoping to the gain valuable experience within the nano research community, he joined Dr.Xia’s lab in Spring 2019 and was working under the guidance of Dr. Zhuangqiang (Paul) Gao and Haihang (Alex) Ye.
Sydney Worrall was raised in Miami, Florida and started at the University of Central Florida in 2018 pursuing a degree in biomedical sciences. Part of the LEARN program, she joined the lab to gain valuable experience and work with nanoparticles under the guidance of Haihang (Alex) Ye.
Hector Del Cid was born in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, moved to El Salvador in 2011, and returned in 2018 to University of Central Florida in pursuit of a degree in Chemistry. Member of the LEARN program, joined the lab in Spring 2019 to gain experience in research of nanoparticles under the guidance of Haihang (Alex) Ye.