Hydrogen Storage in Molecular Clathrates

Viktor V. Struzhkin holds a B.S. and M.S. in physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (1980) and a Ph.D. in solid-state physics from Institute for High-Pressure Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences (IHPP, RAS) (1991). He is a staff member of the Geophysical Laboratory. At the Carnegie Institution, he pioneered a suite of transport measurements in diamond anvil cells, succeeding in measurements of superconductivity at very high pressures in excess of 200 GPa (2 million atm). He is a recognized expert in a multitude of experimental techniques in diamond anvil cells, including transport measurements and optical and synchrotron spectroscopy. His research interests cover condensed-matter physics, simple molecular solids, the chemistry and physics of the Earth's mantle and core, and high-pressure materials science.

Burkhard Militzer received his diploma in physics at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, under the supervision of Werner Ebeling, and he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana−Champaign in 2000 under the supervision of David Ceperley. After working for 3 years as a postdoc at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he joined the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington as Staff Associate in 2003. His research is focused in first-principles computer simulation of materials at high pressure and the applications to planetary interiors.  

Wendy Mao received her B.S. in 1998 from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Ph.D. in 2005 from the Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, under the supervision of Dion Heinz. She is currently a J. R. Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, working under the supervision of Yusheng Zhao and Donald Hickmott, investigating hydrogen storage in molecular compounds. Starting in August 2007, she will be an Assistant Professor at Stanford University with a joint appointment in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences and the Photon Science Department of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Her research interests focus on understanding the behavior of materials at high pressure.

Ho-kwang (David) Mao received his B.S. in Geology (1963) from the National Taiwan University and his M.S. (1966) and Ph.D. (1968) from the University of Rochester, where he conducted high-pressure deep Earth research under the guidance of Professors Bill Bassett and Taro Takahashi. He started as a Postdoctoral Fellow working with Dr. Peter M. Bell at the Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and later became a Staff Geophysicist there, a position he holds to this day. During the past four decades, he has pioneered the development of high-pressure diamond anvil cell techniques and a wide range of synchrotron X-ray, neutron, optical, electrical, and magnetic probes for in-situ diagnosis of samples under extreme pressures and temperatures. His research interests cover high-pressure condensed-matter physics, high-pressure chemistry, high-pressure crystallography, chemistry of the Earth's mantle and core, deep Earth geophysics, physics and chemistry of giant planetary interiors, and high-pressure materials science.  

Russell J. Hemley grew up in California, Colorado, and Utah, and attended Wesleyan University, where he studied chemistry and philosophy (B.A., 1977). He did his graduate work in physical chemistry at Harvard University (M.A., 1980; Ph.D., 1983). After a postdoctoral fellowship in theoretical chemistry at Harvard (1983−84), he joined the Geophysical Laboratory as a Carnegie Fellow (1984−86) and Research Associate (1986−87), and he became a Staff Scientist in 1987. He has been a visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins University (1991−92) and at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Lyon (1996). He is the recipient of the 1990 Mineralogical Society of America Award, and he is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2001 and became a member of JASONS in 2003. In 2005, he was awarded the Balzan Prize in Mineral Physics. He has been an author on over 440 publications.