Dr. Dongkyu Lee is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Prior to joining the University of South Carolina, he conducted his postdoctoral fellowship in the Materials Science and Technology Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. There, he worked on developing new design strategies to enhance the oxygen electrocatalysis and ion transport using oxide thin films and nanostructures. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014. At MIT, his research focused on designing a new electrode architecture for solid oxide fuel cells that overcomes many of the limitations of existing electrodes. He obtained his M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea, in 2006, and graduated summa cum laude from Hanyang University, South Korea, with a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering in 2004. From 2006 to 2009, Dr. Lee was a process engineer in the Semiconductor R&D Center at Samsung Electronics, South Korea, where he worked on developing p-n junctions in semiconductors. His current research interests are synthesizing oxide thin films and nanostructures by pulsed laser deposition, understanding energy conversion and storage mechanisms as well as the physicochemical properties of materials, and applying a fundamental understanding to design advanced energy applications.