Department Personnel
Associate Professor Enrique Gomez | News
02/06/15
Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award
Assistant Professor Enrique Gomez receives Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award from The Graduate School at Penn State.
The award, which includes $1,500, is given to a junior faculty member for excellence in interdisciplinary materials research. Enrique will be recognized at a public ceremony during the 2015 spring semester.
Congratulations Dr. Gomez.
Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award website.
10/16/14
Chemical Engineering graduate student Thinh Le receives doctoral fellowship
Congratulations to graduate student Thinh Le of the Enrique Gomez Research Group for receiving an Advanced Light Source (ALS) Doctoral Fellowship from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The ALS fellowships are offered as one-year appointments with the possibility of renewal. Successful applicants are compensated with an $18,000 annual stipend. Additionally, fellows are matched with an on-site mentor and have access to ALS resources.
Le was cited for his research proposal "Optimizing morphology and interfacial structure for high performance organic photovoltaics from fully conjugated block copolymers."
Thinh will be conducting Resonant Soft X-Ray Scattering (RSOXS) experiments, which will be used to aid in the development and optimization of fully conjugate block copolymers capable of controlling the mesoscale morphology and donor-acceptor interfaces in the active layer of organic photovoltaics.
View the entire story, "Chemical Engineering graduate student Thinh Le receives doctoral fellowship" on the College of Engineering Website.
04/24/14
Dr. Enrique Gomez's research group wins safety inspection award
The Enrique Gomez research group was selected by the University's Environmental Health and Safety Office as the winner of this year's Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) Inspection Award for chemical engineering.
This is a tremendous accomplishment, especially considering the range of research conducted in the Enrique Gomez Lab and the variety of techniques employed in their research.
Congratulations.
Please refer to the safety section of the Department of Chemical Engineering website for more information about lab safety in this department and at Penn State.
02/04/14
Dr. Enrique Gomez's work with organic solar cells is featured in the
Fall 2013/Winter 2014 issue of Engineering Penn State Magazine
Dr. Enrique Gomez and colleagues at Rice University are developing an alternative to the current solar cells on the market.
The current generation of solar cells are made of crystalline silicon, a material that is inorganic, rigid, and expensive.
Dr. Gomez and his collaborators are working to produce organic solar cells that would be flexible and have the potential to be less expensive than the crystalline silicon solar cells. The challenge is getting the fullerene acceptors in the organic solar cells to scale up for mass production, while making them efficient and cheap enough to compete with the crystalline silicon based solar cells on the market.
View Dr. Gomez's efforts in the artible "Solar flex" in the Fall 2013/Winter 2014 issue of Engineering Penn State Magazine.pdf.
View the complete listing of previous issues of Engineering Penn State Magazine on the College of Engineering website.
09/04/13
Flexible solar cells may be the wave of the future
Chemical Engineering faculty member Enrique Gomez and his research group are working to make organic, flexible solar cells a viable option to meet future energy demands.
Enrique explains the majority of solar cells today are inorganic, made of crystalline silicon, and expensive to produce. Organic solar cells offer an alternative that is flexible and potentially less expensive.
Dr. Gomez envisions making solar cells as easily as you can print posters or newspapers, printing solar cells like sheets of paper.
The problem is that the bulk of organic solar cells employ fullerene acceptors that's extremely difficult to scale up for mass production.
Dr. Gomez and his group's most recent attempt was documenting the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters journal. View the entire article "Chemical engineers' research may lead to inexpensive, flexible solar cells".
Chemical Engineers Demonstrate Fundamental Shift In Organic Solar Cell Production.
Chemical Engineers Advance Flexible Organic Solar Cell Manufacturing Technology.
04/25/13
Faculty member Enrique Gomez is helping to shape the future of flexible electronics
Faculty member Enrique Gomez is working on flexible electronics that will lead to a new generation of products and medical treatments.
Imagine tiny smartphones that wrap around our wrists, and flexible displays that fold out as large as a television. Or photovoltaic cells and reconfigurable antennas that conform to the roofs and trunks of our cars. Even implants that can monitor and treat cancer.
Dr. Gomez is one of many researchers investigating flexible electronics at part of Penn State's Materials Research Institute.
Find out more about Dr. Gomez' contribution to this field in the article "Flexible electronics could transform the way we make and use electronic devices" on Penn State Live.
03/27/13
Graduate student Kiarash Vakhshouri receives the 2013 Frank J. Padden Jr. Award
Graduate student Kiarash Vakhshouri of the Enrique Gomez Research Group receives the 2013 Frank J. Padden Jr. Award from the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Polymer Physics.
This award recognizes an outstanding graduate student for Excellence in Polymer Physics Research. Kiarash is the second Penn State graduate student to win this award in the last 5 years (Susan Fullerton Shirey was the 2009 awardee.
Other winners in the past 5 years were from UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and U Illinois).
Congratulations Kiarash.
05/17/12
Enrique Gomez in the Engineering Penn State Magazine
Enrique Gomez is featured in the alumni section of the Winter 2012 Engineering Penn State Magazine. The article and photo highlight Enrique's involvement in the University Court for the Penn State 2011 Homecoming Celebration.
View the excerpt about Enrique's participation in the Penn State 2011 Homecoming.pdf from the Winter 2012 edition of Engineering Penn State Magazine.
10/21/11
2011 Penn State Homecoming Court Photos
Faculty member Enrique Gomez is featured in photos from the 2011 Penn State Homecoming Parade.
Earlier this fall Dr. Gomez was selected be among the faculty on the University Court for Penn State's 2011 Homecoming.
The 2011 Homecoming court included electrical engineering senior Athena Abate, civil engineering senior Will Sheehan, industrial engineering faculty member Paul Lynch and chemical engineering faculty member Enrique Gomez.
09/20/11
Faculty Member Enrique Gomez will be on the 2011 Homecoming University Court.
Dr. Enrique Gomez will be among the faculty on the University Court for Penn State's 2011 Homecoming.
The University Court includes 8 members of Penn State's faculty and staff, 4 men and 4 women, who have been chosen in recognition of their efforts to inspire undergraduate students here at Penn State.
Homecoming is set for Oct. 14-15. This year's theme is "Forever Lions Endless Pride."
View the story "Four engineers named part of 2011 homecoming court" on Penn State Live.
You can watch Enrique's response to the selection below. Enrique appears about 1:30 minute into the video.
09/08/11
Dr. Enrique Gomez among 70 engineers invited to symposium in China
Faculty member Enrique Gomez has been invited to attend the Chinese-American Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium on November 5-7, in Shenzhen, China.
The annual symposium brings together distinguished young researchers who have made noteworthy contributions to science and have been identified as future leaders in their fields. Enriquie was selected by a committee of Academy members to attend the event with 70 other young scientists from the U.S. and China.
"Chemical engineer Gomez among 70 engineers invited to China symposium" on Penn State Live.
08/16/11
Graduate students working with Enrique Gomez
win awards at the Emerging Materials for Thin-Film Solar Cells Workshop
Graduate students Changhe Guo and Kiarash Vakhshouri each won separate awards at the Emerging Materials for Thin-Film Solar Cells Workshop hosted by the International Center for Materials Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Changhe and Kiarash each won the Best Poster Award, competing against schools such as UCSB, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, Cambridge, and Georgia Tech. Changhe and Kiarash are advised by Dr. Enrique Gomez.
06/29/11
Dr. Enriquie Gomez researching the potential of organic solar cells
While silicon solar cells are still the workhorse of first generation photovoltaics, faculty member Enrique Gomez is conducting research to improve the performance of OSCs (organic solar cells) to compete with silicon-based solar cells.
In commercial applictions silicon solar cells have solar energy conversion efficiencies of 14-20 percent, while OSCs have solar energy conversion efficiencies of 8 percent.
The potential for organic solar cells resides in the material. OSCs can be manufatured using cheaper materials, such as plastics. OSCs are lightweight and flexible, allowing more diverse applications. OSCs are simple to produce, some can be manufactured on existing roll-to-roll printing presses.
Learn more about Dr. Gomez's research with organic solar cells in the Focus on Materials article "Raising the Bar on Organic Solar Cells."
03/16/11
Dr. Enrique Gomez receives National Science Foundation award
Enrique Gomez recevies a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for his project: "Morphology Control Through a Mechanistic Understanding of Structural Evolution in Organic Semiconductor Mixtures."
The project aims to control the morphology of organic semiconductor mixtures to develop inexpensive solar cells capable of efficiently generating electricity from sunlight. Methodologies to promote anisotropic crystal growth and control nucleation will be explored as strategies to tune the morphology by altering the crystallization of photoactive polymers.
The National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers the Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education.
06/30/10
Enrique Gomez wins ORAU Powe Award
Assistant Professor Enrique Gomez has been awarded a research grant from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) consortium.
Gomez is one of only 32 faculty members receiving a grant, which recognizes faculty for their work in engineering or applied science; life sciences; mathematics and computer science; physical sciences; and policy, management or education.
View the entire Enrique Gomez article on Penn State Live.