Katerina Hilleke
Postdoctoral Researcher, University at Buffalo
Chemistry
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About
Katerina Hilleke is a postdoc in the Zurek lab at the University at Buffalo working in Thrust 4: Extreme Chemistry. Her research interests include crystal structure prediction at high pressures and exploring the bonding and chemical pressure of complex phases. As a theoretician, she uses the XtalOpt evolutionary algorithm developed in the Zurek lab to carry out crystal structure prediction for systems including elemental boron and sodium and a variety of electronic structure codes to analyze band structures, phonon vibrations, and bonding schemes in high pressure structures including boron allotropes and C-S-H phases. Recently, she has been working on exploring the role of atomic size effects via the Chemical Pressure method in stabilizing the metal hydride clathrate structures which have been shown to have high Tc values.
Education
B.S. Chemistry, Harvey Mudd College, 2013
Ph.D. Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2019