4/13/2026 Siv Schwink for Illinois Physics
Kataman-Kustwan is double-majoring in physics and computer science + astronomy. He will complete a 10-week summer research project this summer at Caltech working on strain-controlled exciton production in layered materials.
Written by Siv Schwink for Illinois Physics
Illinois undergraduate student Jiri Kataman-Kustwan, who is pursuing a dual major in physics and computer science + astronomy, has been awarded a Caltech WAVE Fellowship. The $6,000 award will support a 10-week summer research project under the guidance of Nai-Chang Yeh, the Thomas W. Hogan Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. The fellowship additionally provides on-campus housing, meals, and a small stipend for incidentals.
Kataman-Kustwan was also selected for a secondary award, a Kavli Nanoscience Institute SURF-the-WAVE (STW) prize, which will underwrite Kataman-Kustwan’s WAVE Fellowship award and provide additional professional development opportunities. STW Fellows are invited to participate in educational and social events and activities to gain new technical skills, insights, and experience life as a Caltech researcher.
This prize covers the full WAVE salary and stipends, as well as complimentary access to the KNI Laboratory for their research.
Kataman-Kustwan has already been in touch with Yeh to coordinate the scope of his research in her group.
“My project will combine theoretical and experimental approaches to research how strain can be used to engineer excitons in 2D materials,” said Kataman-Kustwan. “Excitons are bound states of electron-hole pairs that, in 2D materials, exhibit properties that can be controlled by strain.”
Excitons have applications in several technologies, including solar cells, LEDs, quantum computing, energy conversion systems, and in the study of disordered materials. Kataman-Kustwan will attempt to overcome several challenges presented in working with excitons.
“To create controllable strain,” he said, “we will develop a scalable approach to directly synthesize graphene on a nanopatterned SiO2 substrate. We will enlist another material, MoS2, a metal that can host excitons on account of its particular band structure, to prevent the screening of excitons by the underlying metal layer, which otherwise would suppress their optical emission.
“Molecular-dynamics simulations will be used to predict how the MoS2 layer deforms on the strained substrate. Then, by calculating the band structure of the deformed MoS2 layer in our simulations, we will determine the most suitable strain configuration to enhance the occurrence of excitons in our physical samples. With this proposed method, we hope to achieve a clean, large-scale, homogeneous strained MoS2 device for detailed scanning tunneling microscopy and photoluminescence studies, while paving the way for other future applications.”