Our Team
Scientific Minds
Erica Neves de Faria
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Erica received her undergraduate degree from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, in Brazil. Following that, she obtained her DPhil at the University of Oxford (UK) and has recently join the Knapp group, in January 2022, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Her work in the group is focused on the synthesis of low valent aluminium complexes to be used as precursors to functional materials.
Dr Gi-Byoung Hwang
Cover supervisor during Caroline's maternity leave
In 2018, Gi completed his PhD at the UCL Chemistry Department. After two years as a postdoctoral research associate, he started Independent Research with Ramsay Memorial Fellowship in the UCL Chemistry Department. His research has focused on the synthesis of gold nanoclusters, enhancement of photocatalytic reaction, and superhydrophobic surface. So far, He published 38 research papers, registered 16 patents and received the KSEUK Outstanding Early Career Researcher Award. In Oct 2023, he joined Caroline's groups to undertake Caroline's role during her maternity leave.
Shreya Mrig
3rd year PhD
Shreya received her MSci in Chemistry from UCL in 2018, for which she was awarded a place on the Dean’s List. Her PhD research is focused on the design of precursors such that their decomposition can be fine-tuned. She specialises in Cu and Al complexes that can be used to inkjet print highly conductive tracks for use in flexible electronics.
YE ZHOU
3rd year PhD student
Ye completed his BEng in Chemical Engineering and MSc in Mechanical Engineering (Materials stream) from the University of Nottingham and then went on to complete his MSc in Advanced Materials for Energy and Environment from UCL in 2019. He joined the Knapp group in January 2020 and works on the inkjet printing of metal-organic decomposition precursors and additive manufacturing.
Leonardo Santoni
3nd year PhD student
Leonardo completed his MSci in Chemistry at the University of Bologna, doing one undergraduate year Erasmus in Brussels and earning a postgraduate Erasmus Internship at the University of Copenhagen focused on the synthesis of helicenes, fluorescent compounds, for OLED. He joined Caroline Knapp’s group for the PhD working on the synthesis of Aluminium complexes as precursors for functional materials.
Jingyan Wang
2nd year PhD student
Jingyan Wang completed her master  under the supervision of Dr Caroline Knapp in her third year of the course, she worked on the use of combinatorial inkjet printing for the formation of silver-copper inks for flexible electronics. For her PhD project, she focused on copper complexes that can be formulated into conductive inks and be used to inkjet print highly conductive tracks for use in flexible electronics.