Nathan James Pataki

Background

Nathan James Pataki earned a B.Sc. in Materials Science & Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA) in 2017. At Georgia Tech, he researched thermal stresses and surface energy engineering methods related to electronics packaging in Prof. CP Wong’s lab. During this time, Nathan was also funded by the American Chemical Society and the National Science Foundation to participate in an international research exchange program with Prof. Carsten Streb’s lab at Ulm University (Germany) where he studied polyoxometalate-functionalized nanocarbon species as Li-ion battery anodes.

After graduating, Nathan worked for a year as a battery cell engineer for General Motors Company (USA) where he conducted performance and safety tests on Li-ion cells for electric vehicles. He then accepted an Erasmus Mundus scholarship from the European Commission and earned a M.Sc. in Chemistry from Université Paris-Saclay (France) in 2020. Nathan’s M.Sc. thesis was supervised by Prof. Sylvain Franger and focused on the synthesis, processing, and performance of solid-state electrolytes (LLZO, LATP and LAGP) in an all-solid-state Li-ion battery.

Current research

Nathan is now a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Early-Stage Researcher as part of the HORATES Innovative Training Network and is pursuing a PhD in Physics at Politecnico di Milano (Italy). Nathan is currently supervised by Dr. Mario Caironi and working at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Center for Nano Science and Technology) to develop an expertise in printing of organic and hybrid thermoelectric materials, improve the architecture of thermoelectric generators and fabricate printed micro-organic thermoelectric generators.