Head of Laboratory
Prof. Suong "Su" Nguyen
Su was born and raised in Da Nang, Vietnam. She moved to the United States in 2013 to pursue her undergraduate studies at the University of Mississippi. In 2022, she completed her PhD in Organic Chemistry in the laboratory of Prof. Robert Knowles at Princeton University. Her doctoral research lay at the interface of synthetic organic chemistry and materials science, where she developed light-driven chemical strategies to address challenges in small-molecule synthesis, diamond surface chemistry, and plastic sustainability. Following her PhD, Su joined the group of Prof. Jeremiah Johnson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a Schmidt Science Postdoctoral Fellow. There, she further deepened her interests into polymer science by developing sustainable approaches to commodity plastics, exploring molecular strategies to enhance the toughness and tearing energy of polymer networks, and designing new ligand architectures for the synthesis and stabilization of gold nanoparticles. In March 2025, Su joined the Institute of Chemicals Science and Engineering (ISIC) at EPFL as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, where she leads the Laboratory of Synthetic Polymer Chemistry (LCPS).
Administrative Assistant
Nadia Gauljaux
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Yuchen Hu
Yuchen was born and raised in a small southern city in China. He obtained his master’s degree from Tianjin University in China. During his master’s program, he performed his research on Covalent-Organic Frameworks (COFs) in Prof. Bin Zhang’s lab. Then he moved to the United States to pursue his Ph.D. degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he conducted the research on Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and their applications under the guidance of Prof. Jian Zhang. After receiving his Ph.D. degree in 2022, Yuchen joined N1 Life, inc. (San Jose, CA) and worked on peptide-drug conjugates for one year. After that, he went to Shanghai Hongene and gained experience of DNA, RNA and oligonucleotides synthesis and design. In his spare time, Yuchen is a soccer player, a keen traveller, a movie lover and a real foodie.
Doctoral Student
Shubhanga Ballal
Shubhanga was born on the southwest coast of India and grew up in Austin, Texas, where he worked in the lab of Prof. John Ekerdt at UT Austin to characterize inorganic thin films. He received his B.S. in Materials Science & Engineering from MIT, and served as Vice President of the National Championship-winning Sport Taekwondo team. After graduating, Shubhanga worked for three years at Quadratic 3D, a startup developing volumetric 3D printing technologies. As an avid enthusiast of skiing, cheese, and chocolate, he is excited to be pursuing a PhD in Switzerland. In his spare time, Shubhanga also enjoys watching sports such as basketball and tennis, attending music concerts, and cooking.
Yuji Watanabe
Yuji was born and raised in Japan and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in pharmaceutical sciences from Kyoto University. He conducted research on stereoselective aldol reactions using organocatalysis in the lab of Professor Kawabata, under the supervision of then Associate Professor Furuta. Following graduation, Yuji joined Asahi Kasei Corporation, where he worked on the development of super engineering plastics and polymer chemical recycling. After five years of corporate research, he decided to pursue a PhD at EPFL, specializing in polymer chemistry. In his spare time, Yuji enjoys working out, playing games, watching movies and cat videos.