Elena Meirzadeh was born in Iran and moved to Israel at age 12. She completed her BSc at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her MSc and PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Meir Lahav and Prof. Igor Lubomirsky. Using pyroelectric measurements during her graduate studies, she developed an extremely sensitive technique for detecting deviations from symmetry in crystals, which enabled improving our fundamental understanding of crystal structure, function, and different growth mechanisms.
As a Rothschild postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in New York, she discovered the beauty of synthetic chemistry and made a new form of carbon, named Graphullerene, which consists of layers of fullerene molecules peeled into two-dimensional sheets as thin as a single molecular carbon.
This discovery brought Elena to an excited state and led her to explore how organic molecules become reactive at elevated temperatures and utilize solid-state synthetic techniques to polymerize molecules and grow single crystals of infinite extended structures.
Elena joined the Department of Molecular Chemistry and Materials Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in summer 2023, and her research is centered around the synthesis of novel nanomaterials with potential applications in clean energy and new optical and electronic devices.
Outside the lab, Elena enjoys swimming and running, going for an adventurous hike, and scuba diving in exotic locations.
