Prof Mehdi is currently a lecturer in the School of Engineering and Associate Director of the Albert Crewe Centre for Electron Microscopy at the University of Liverpool (since 2017).
She received her undergraduate and Master's degree in Chemistry from University of Warsaw in Poland (2008) and her PhD in Chemistry from the Miami University, USA (2013).
Following her PhD, she joined the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in 2013 and in 2016 was promoted to a permanent staff scientist. Her work at PNNL involved the development of the in-situ TEM stages to study dynamic process with application to Li-ion batteries as part of Joint Centre for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) funded by US Department of Energy.
She has over eight years of experience in the development and application of in-situ methods in electron microscopy for which she has received numerous awards. These include the 2019 Albert Crewe Award from the Microscopy Society of America MSA for distinguished contributions to the field of microscopy and microanalysis in the physical sciences by an early career scientist, the 2015 MRS Postdoctoral Award, the 2015 Microscopy Society of America postdoctoral award, the 2014 Microscopy & Microanalysis Presidential award, and the 2013 Miami University award for outstanding Ph.D. work.
Additionally, in 2016 she received a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship to preform Research at the Nagoya University, Japan in collaboration with Toyota, which she turned down to join the University of Liverpool.
She has over 50 publications (~2024 citations, h-index=20) has organised 5 international in-situ liquid TEM workshops and symposia, and has given over 30 invited presentations at the international meetings and institutions.
Her primary research area is focused on Li-ion battery and she is a coinvestigator on a Fast Start “Degradation” and “Characterization” projects funded by the Faraday Institution/EPSRC.
She is also part of the EPSRC Crystallisation in the Real-World project as a key collaborator identifying mechanisms of nucleation and growth in CaCO3.
Currently, her research group focuses on developing advanced new microscopy methods to generate an in depth understanding of reaction kinetics at solid/liquid and solid/gas interfaces in batteries, electrocatalysis and pharmaceuticals.