Leader of the group

Dr. Pierre Boillat

Group Head

Pierre received a Micro-engineering degree (Ingénieur en Microtechnique) from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL) in 1997. After a few years of industrial experience he started a PhD thesis working at the Paul Scherrer Institut and obtained his degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Zürich (ETHZ) in 2009. Since then, he has been leading the activity of neutron imaging of fuel cells and other electrochemical systems at PSI. In 2015, he performed a 6 research stay at CEA in Grenoble (France) on the topic of small angle neutron scattering of operating fuel cells.
 

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Dirk Scheuble

Engineer

Dirk received his Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Applied Sciences, Cologne (Germany) in 2009. After two years as a scientific assistant in Cologne he moved to Ingolstadt to work for Audi. Then in February 2015 he moved back to his roots in southern Germany and joined PSI. As an Engineer in the Group – Neutron Radiography of electrochemical systems he is designing test fuel cells, test-benches, software, and many more trying to support the group members as good as possible.

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Antonia Ruffo

Antonia graduated in Physical Chemistry of Materials at the University of Pavia (Italy) in 2019, studying ceramic magnetic nanoparticles for biomedical application, a thesis that allowed her to win a scholarship to conclude this project.
Fascinated by the multiple applications of nanoscience, Antonia joined PSI in 2020 for her doctoral studies to improve her knowledge. Actually, she is working on neutron nanomediators for non-invasive temperature mapping of fuel cells.

 

Wenmei Liu
Wenmei Liu

Ph.D. Student

Wenmei recieved her Masters degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University (China) in 2017, where she did her master thesis on thermal energy harvesting using metamaterials. After that she worked on oxygen semi-permeation membrane as a scientific assistant in Stuttgart until she joined PSI in 2019 for her doctoral studies. Wenmei works on understanding the behavior of super-cooled water in complex porous materials and develop synthetic strategies and engineered solutions to prevent the propagation of freezing in fuel cells.

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Eric Ricardo Carreon Ruiz

Ph.D. Student

Ricardo has a degree in engineering physics from ITESM (Mexico), where he worked on RX-NDT for aeronautical materials and in micro and nano-fabrication techniques at MTL - MIT. Afterwards, he received a double Master degree in Applied Physics and Material Science from the University of Rennes 1 and the University of Montpellier. During this time, he worked on energy selective neutron imaging for PEFC and Li-ion batteries at PSI, which greatly developed his interest in energy storage and conversion systems. Ricardo continues his professional development as a doctoral student at PSI where he works on the understanding of transport limiting mechanisms for Li-ion battery materials using advanced characterization techniques as wavelength resolved neutron imaging.

Magali received her Master degree in Fluid Dynamics in 2003 at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Electronique, d’Electrotechnique, d’Informatique,d’Hydraulique et de Télécommunications de Toulouse (aka N7) in Toulouse France, and her PhD thesis in Fluid Dynamics at the Institut Nationale Supérieur of Toulouse. After six years as a cooling engineer at Alstom in Baden in Switzerland, she went back to research as a scientist in PSI. Magalis main project in the group is building cells with evaporation cooling concept. She also helps with external Neutron campaigns.

Mateusz graduated from Lodz University of Technology with major in Power Engineering (Mechanical dept.) in 2016. During his studies he worked for Alstom Power as plant designer assistant and upon completing his contract he decided to broaden his experience by joining PSI Nuclear Energy and Safety division as scientific assistant. Seeing future in making renewable energies sustainable, Mateusz joined research on PEM water electrolysis using neutron imaging.

Victoria has a degree in Chemistry from the University of Alicante(Spain). During her studies she stayed  one year in the University of Freiburg (Germany) where she did an internship working on drug-delivery systems. Afterwards she receive her Master’s degree in Material Science from the University of Alicante where she worked on catalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction and in May 2015 she joined PSI where she is now doing her doctoral studies at ETH Zürich. Victoria works on the development of porous materials with patterned wettability for polymer electrolyte fuel cells, focusing on optimization of the process and durability. She also works on imbibition in porous material and coating procedures, wettability and polymeric surface modifications.