About
Professor Mehdi is currently part of 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 the University of Warsaw in Poland (2008) and her PhD in Chemistry from 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 processes with application to Li-ion batteries as part of the Joint Centre for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) funded by the US Department of Energy.
She has over ten years of experience in the development and application of in-situ methods in electron microscopy for which she has received numerous awards. These include 2021 KIT International Excellence Grants and Fellowships, 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 PhD work.
Additionally, in 2016 she received a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship to perform Research at Nagoya University, Japan in collaboration with Toyota, which she turned down to join the University of Liverpool.
She has over 60 publications (~3490 citations, h-index=26) has organised multiple international in-situ liquid TEM workshops and symposia, and has given over 40 invited presentations at international meetings and institutions.
Her primary research area is focused on Li-ion batteries and she is the Energy Science Team Lead of Relativistic Ultrafast Electron Diffraction and Imaging (RUEDI) Facility and part of 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 in 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.