Meet Alice 

Name: Chia-Yun Lai (Alice)
Research interest: Atomic Force Microscopy, Wettability, 2D Van der Waals Materials, Drug Delivery 

Email: chiayun.lai@ku.ac.ae

 

Biography:

Chia-Yun Lai received her B.S. in physics from the National Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan. She had worked as a research assistant on a peripheral arterial disease medical research in biomedicine lab of Academia Sinica in Taiwan for two years. Later, she joined Dr. Chiesa’s lab in Khalifa University. This is the beginning of a fascinating story about developing nanoscale characterization techniques, with the atomic force microscopy as a main tool to investigate nanoscale wettability for various surfaces.

 

Research Summary:

Techniques used to study nanoscale rough surfaces’ wettability are not well understood due to the lack of spatial resolution. Therefore, in my research topic, I focus on developing techniques that allow us to investigate nanoscale wettability with higher resolution. The developed techniques are applied to build the connection between macroscale and nanoscale wettability by studying the idealized flat surfaces and engineered rough surfaces. Currently, I am working on combining the understanding of nanoscale wettability together with computer-assisted database to allow more efficient usage of the obtained data.

 

List of Publications:

  1. Chia Y. Lai*, Karen Sloyan*, Jin Y. Lu, Boulos Alfakes, Saeed Al Hassan, Ibraheem Almansouri, Marcus S. Dahlem, Matteo Chiesa. The Who is Who of Morphology and Chemistry in Wettability Studies. J. Phys. Chem. C, 2018.
  2. Chia Y. Lai, Gijo Raj, Ieva Liepuoniute, Matteo Chiesa, Panče Naumov. Direct Observation of Photoinduced trans–cis Isomerization on Azobenzene Single Crystal. Crystal Growth & Design, 2017, 17 (6), pp 3306–3312
  3. Chia Y. Lai, Sergio Santos, Carlo A Amadei, Karim R Gadelrab, Tzu-Chieh Tang, Albert Verdaguer, Victor Barcons, Josep Font, Jaime Colchero, Matteo Chiesa. The Mendeleev-Meyer force project. Nanoscale, 2016, 8 (40), pp 17400-17406
  4. Chia Y. Lai, Saveri Perri, Sergio Santos, Ricardo Garcia, Matteo Chiesa. Rapid quantitative chemical mapping of surfaces with sub-2nm resolution. Nanoscale, 2016, 8 (16), pp 9688-9694.
  5. Chia Y. Lai, Sergio Santos, Matteo Chiesa. Systematic multidimensional quantification of nanoscale systems from bimodal AFM data. ACS Nano, 2016, 10 (6), 6265-6272.
  6. Chia Y. Lai, Sergio Santos, Matteo Chiesa. Reconstruction of height of sub-nm steps with bimodal atomic force microscopy. Nanotechnology, 2016, 27 (7), 075701.
  7. Chia Y. Lai*, Tuza Olukan*, Sergio Santos, Amal Al Ghaferi, Matteo Chiesa. The power laws of nanoscale forces in ambient conditions. Chem Comm, 2015, 51 (99), 17619-17622.
  8. Chia Y. Lai, Monica Cozzolino, Maria Vittoria Diamanti, Matteo Chiesa. Underling mechanism of time dependent surface properties of calcite (CaCO3): a baseline for investigations of reservoirs wettability. Phys. Chem. C, 2015, 119 (52), 29038-29043.
  9. Chia Y. Lai, Sergio Santos, Matteo Chiesa. General interpretation and theory of apparent height in dynamic atomic force microscopy. RSC Advances, 2015, 5 (97), 80069-80075.
  10. Chia Y. Lai*, Victor Barcons*, Sergio Santos, Matteo Chiesa. Periodicity in Bimodal AFM. Appl. Phys., 2015, 118 (4), 044905
  11. Chia Y. Lai, Pei J. Wu, Steve R. Roffler, Sho T. Lee, Shiaw M. Hwang, Shoei S. Wang, Kuan Wang, and Patrick C. H. Hsieh. Clearance Kinetics of Biomaterials Affects Stem Cell Retention and Therapeutic Efficacy. Biomacromolecules, 2014, 15 (2), 564-573.
  12. Chia Y. Lai*, Tzu C. Tang*, Carlo A. Amadei, Alexander J. Marsden, Albert Verdaguer, Neil Wilson, Matteo Chiesa. A Nanoscopic Approach to Studying Evolution in Graphene Wettability. Carbon, 2014, 80, 784-792.