Rebecca Smaha
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry
Dr. Rebecca Smaha is from Austin, TX, and received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry and certificates in materials science and engineering and linguistics from Princeton University in 2014. She then received a Fulbright grant to perform solid state chemistry research in Madrid, Spain, at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She earned her doctorate in inorganic chemistry at Stanford University in the applied physics lab of Prof. Young Lee studying synthetic minerals with interesting low-temperature magnetic behavior using various X-ray and neutron scattering techniques.
Dr. Smaha joined NREL as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow in 2021, investigating novel ternary nitrides for potential multiferroic applications. She is now a staff scientist in the Materials Discovery & Design group within NREL’s Materials Science Center. Her current research focuses on the design, discovery, and development of novel ternary nitrides as both bulk powders and thin films, both fundamentally and for applications including magnetism, optoelectronics, detection, and spintronics.
Education
- AB – Princeton University
- MS – Stanford University
- PhD – Stanford University
- Postdoctoral Study – National Renewable Energy Laboratory