Science Student Spotlight: Roxana Piotrowska

Roxana Piotrowska is a Ph.D. candidate in the Nanotechnology and Materials Science sub discipline, working with Professor Rein Ulijn and Xi Chen at the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) at the Graduate Center. She received her Master’s degree from the Graduate Center, CUNY, and her Bachelor’s from the University of Applied Sciences Aarhus, Denmark.

Her Ph.D. work focuses on elucidating mechanisms of water-responsive materials for evaporation energy harvesting. She utilizes the expertise of her mentors; peptide nanotechnology (Ulijn Lab) and evaporation energy (Chen Lab) to create peptide-based water-responsive materials. Her work was recently published in Nature Materials.

She co-founded the Materials Research Society (MRS) CUNY chapter and she’s been involved with Nanotech NYC- a non-profit organization that aims at fostering advancements of nanotechnology. She served as Chemistry Program Representative for ’17-’18, Representative for Faculty-Student Disciplinary Panel for ’18-’19, and Member of the CUNY Research Committee for ’18-’20. She’s a recipient of the Gertrude Elion, Helen S. Schectman, and Amie James Awards. Prior to joining the Ph.D. program, Roxana worked for biomedical and tech startups in NYC. Her interest in life science, the tech industry, and investing continues throughout the graduate program.

Selected Publications
R. Piotrowska, T. Hesketh, H. Wang, A. Martin, D. Bowering, C. Zhang, C. Hu, S. A. McPhee, T. Wang, Y. Park, P. Singla, T. McGlone, A. Florence, T. Tuttle, R.V. Ulijn, X. Chen. Mechanistic insights of evaporation-induced actuation in supramolecular crystals Nature Materials, 2020, in press.