Professor Wen Hui (Sophia) Cheng

Wen-Hui (Sophia) Cheng received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, and pursed her Ph.D. from Caltech, all in Materials Science. During her Ph.D. research under the guidance of Prof. Harry Atwater, she focused on mesoscale design of photoelectrochemical fuel cells as part of the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP). Afterward, she joined Professor Dionne's group as TomKat Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. She has extensive experience with semiconductor nanofabrication and material characterization, in addition to optical simulations and device physics. She has made an integrated device for splitting water with sunlight to make hydrogen fuel, and also demonstrated a gas diffusion electrode for CO2 reduction to generate CO from solar energy, both with record efficiencies at the time. These efforts have been honored with the MRS graduate student silver award and the Dow sustainability innovation student challenge award. She is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. Her research interests include manipulating light to assist chemistry for energy application and engineering structure for optoelectronics as a material scientist.