Dr. Kirill Kovnir

Kirill Kovnir received Ph.D. with Prof. A. V. Shevelkov scrutinizing inverse clathrates. Afterwards he was tunneling between Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, and Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, exploring potential of intermetallic compounds in heterogeneous catalysis supervised by Prof. Yu. Grin and Prof. R. Schlögl. In 2008 he moved to Florida State University where he acquired a comprehensive knowledge of magnetism of complex solids under guidance of Prof. M. Shatruk. Kirill started his independent career in 2011 at UC Davis where he was promoted to Associate Professor in March 2017. Kirill joined the ISU faculty in Fall 2017 and was promoted to Professor in 2022. Kirill’s research interests are in the broad field of solid state and materials chemistry. Research in his group is focused on synthesis of novel thermoelectric, superconducting, magnetic, catalytic, and low-dimensional materials and exploring their crystal structure, chemical bonding, and physical properties. Understanding the structure-property relationship is a key to the rational design of such materials.