Michael Katz

Born in Israel, I moved to Vancouver Canada when I was 7 years old. The next twenty or so years were spent in school learning to be a chemist. In 2009 I got my PhD in inorganic chemistry from Simon Fraser University (SFU). My research was focused on two main projects. In the first project I developed a reversible ammonia sensor. Sensitivities of ppb were obtained. In a second project I systematically investigated the factors which would lead to highly birefringent inorganic polymers. Birefringence is a measure of the difference in refractive index in two orthogonal directions. My initial attempt yielded a birefringence of 0.06. Just to give you an idea, the majority of materials out there are significantly lower than that. By carefuly investigating the constituents of the polymer, I was able to get birefringence values of 0.5.

After my PhD I moved down to Chicago Il to continue my education at Northwestern University. Having funding from the canadian government, I wanted to try my hand at something new. I choose solar energy conversion. In short, I spent the next 3 years working on learning how light can be converted to electricity, and what factors make for a good/bad solar cell.

During my tenure at Northwestern, I also investigated the synthesis, characterization, and applications of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).

So what's next you ask? Only time will tell.