Qichen Song HQI Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University

I am an HQI Postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, hosted by Prof. Jarad A. Mason in Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. I also work closely with Prof. Julia A. Mundy in Department of Physics. In Jan. 2022, I obtained my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, advised by Prof. Gang Chen.

I am interested in understanding, manipulating, and optimizing the conversion, transfer, and storage of energy in phase-change and caloric materials, using tools including laser spectroscopy, synthetic chemistry, and ab initio calculations, to address challenges in energy and sustainability research.

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Selected publications

Qichen Song, Rahil Ukani, Vidhya Dev, Jungwoo Shin, Jinyoung Seo, Hong Ki Kim, Caleb Stamper, Ryan McGillicuddy, Catherine Thai, Dehong Yu, Gang Chen, Jarad A. Mason*, "Reversible regulation of thermal conductivity through spin-crossover transitions", in revision with Nat. Mat., 2025

Lucy S. Nathwani, Anne Ruperto, Ashvini Vallipuram, Abigail Y. Jiang, Grace A. Pan, Dan Ferenc Segedin, Ari B. Turkiewicz, Charles M. Brooks, Jarad A. Mason*, Qichen Song*, and Julia A. Mundy*, "Observation of microscopic domain effects in the metal-insulator transition of thin-film NdNiO3", in revision with Nano Lett., 2025

Qichen Song*, Sorren Warkander, Samuel C. Huberman*, "Probing carrier and phonon transport in semiconductors all at once through frequency-domain photoreflectance", Phys. Rev. Applied, 2024, 21, 034044

Chaitanya A. Gadre#, Xingxu Yan#, Qichen Song, Jie Li, Lei Gu, Toshihiro Aoki, Sheng-Wei Lee, Gang Chen, Ruqian Wu, Xiaoqing Pan*, "Nanoscale imaging of phonon dynamics by electron microscopy", Nature, 2022, 606, 292–297

Qichen Song, Jiawei Zhou, Gang Chen*, "Significant reduction in semiconductor interface resistance via interfacial atomic mixing", Phys. Rev. B, 2022, 105, 195306

Qichen Song*, Gang Chen, "Evaluation of diffuse mismatch model for phonon scattering at disordered interfaces", Phys. Rev. B, 2021, 104, 085310.

Qichen Song, Te-Huan Liu, Jiawei Zhou, Zhiwei Ding, Gang Chen*, "Ab initio study of electron mean free paths and thermoelectric properties of lead telluride", Materials Today Physics, 2017, 2, 69-77.

Qichen Song, Jiawei Zhou, Laureen Meroueh, David Broido, Zhifeng Ren, Gang Chen*, "The effect of shallow vs. deep level doping on the performance of thermoelectric materials", Appl. Phys. Lett., 2016, 109, 263902.

Updates

Our work on imaging the phonon dynamics in nanostructures has been published on Nature! - June 8, 2022