Dan Pennachio

Education

• B.A., Physics, Colby College, 2012
• B.Eng., Materials Science, Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, 2013
• PhD. Materials, UC Santa Barbara, 2019

Bio

Dan Pennachio joined the Palmstrom group in the Summer of 2013. During his undergraduate education, he was involved in a 5-year dual-degree program where he earned a B.A. in physics from Colby College and a B.Eng. in materials science from Dartmouth College. His senior thesis involved stabilizing external cavity diode lasers with a temperature feedback loop.

Research

Dan was interested in the growth and characterization of 2D electronic materials for advanced devices. Materials with confined geometries, such as hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), graphene, and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), have excellent properties for new electronic devices. He investigated the growth of these materials using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), with some modifications such as plasma-assisted or gas-source MBE growth.

After the Palmstrom Group

Dan currently has a Post Doc position at the Naval Research Lab in Washington D.C.