Malika Jeffries-EL

Malika Jeffries–EL received BA degrees in Chemistry and Africana Studies at Wellesley College and Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from The George Washington University. After spending one year at Smith College as a Mendenhall Fellow she worked as a post–doctoral researcher under the direction of Professor Richard D. McCullough at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2005, she joined the faculty in the Chemistry Department at Iowa State University and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2012. She was a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor in the chemistry department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015. She joined the Department of Chemistry and Division of Materials Science at Boston Univeristy in 2016. Her research focuses on the synthesis of novel pi–conjugated materials and the investigation of structure–property relationships in these systems. These organic semiconductors are of technological importance impacting a variety of areas including energy (solar cell), electronics (transistors) and life sciences (sensors). Thus, research in the group is highly interdisciplinary combining elements of organic chemistry, theory and materials science.