Group Members

Professor Wayne D. Kaplan is a graduate of the Technion, and after a post-doc at MPI Stuttgart he joined the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the Technion in 1995. He is a fellow of the American Ceramic Society and a member of the Israel Microscopy Society, and he served as Dean of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (2010-2014), as the Executive Vice President for Research of the Technion (2014-2019), Pro Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of GTIIT (2021-2022), and Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development of the Technion (2022-2025). Continue Reading Wayne D. Kaplan

Dr. Rachel Marder completed her MSc in 2010 and her PhD in 2015, both in Materials Engineering at the Technion. Her PhD research focused on the densification mechanisms during Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS). SPS is a novel hot-pressing technique, which uses a pulsed dc-current to heat the ceramic powder, and it has been successfully applied to fabricate fully-dense ceramics within a few minutes only. In 2015 Rachel joined the Metal-Ceramic Interface Group, where she is working as a full time researcher. Her research includes processing and sintering of ceramics (oxides, carbides) and ceramic matrix composites, as well as microstructure characterization (SEM, TEM, X-ray analysis). Additionally, she is teaching the undergraduate course in ceramics at the Technion (since 2019). Continue Reading Dr. Rachel Marder

Asaf completed his Bachelor of Science in Materials Science and Engineering & Chemistry at the Technion, Haifa, in 2023. During his undergraduate studies, for his senior project, he participated in research in Professor Maytal Caspari Toroker’s group on the behavior of Hematite as a catalyst for water splitting under an applied external electric field using computational methods. He later undertook another project in Kaplan’s group on the two-step sintering of alumina doped with MgO. Continue Reading Asaf Kazmirsky

Xinnian obtained her bachelor's degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Chongqing University, China, in 2020. During her undergraduate studies, she investigated the influence of magnesia activity on the resistance of magnesium phosphate cement to water, under the supervision of Prof. Jueshi Qian. She earned her M.Sc. in Materials Science from the Technion in 2024, under the supervision of Prof. Wayne D. Kaplan (Technion) and Prof. Yuanshen Qi (GTIIT). Her M.Sc. research focused on studying the influence of Fe on the grain boundary mobility of alumina. She is currently researching the effects of electric fields on point defect distribution and grain boundary evolution in ceramics. Continue Reading Xinnian Wu