Student Profiles

Daeri Tenery
Chemistry Ph.D. Candidate

Daeri is originally from Seoul, South Korea. She came to the U.S. when she was a teenager and initially didn't speak any English at all. During high school in cold, snowy Oswego, New York, she discovered that she had a gift for mathematics and chemistry. Initially it was because these subjects did not require a strong background in English. However, Daeri's language skills improved rapidly and she found that she loved organic chemistry. She obtained a Bachelor's of Science degree in Chemistry from the State University of New York (SUNY) in Oswego, NY. "I like the school, but winter was so terrible there. We would get the lake effect snow because we were close to Lake Ontario and you could hardly see anything. When I was walking to class sometimes my eyebrows would be covered with snow it was coming down so hard." She received a full scholarship from SUNY Oswego and in her second year she actually worked at Bristol Myers Squibb, a large pharmaceutical company, as an organic chemist. "I really like organic chemistry. You can do so many things. For example, at Bristol Myers I worked on developing different medicines and one of medicines I was synthesizing could reduce high blood pressure. It is interesting that you can do this kind of work to impact people's lives, I really enjoy that. After she received her B.S., Daeri actually taught high school for 3 years at Daytona Beach high school in Florida. "I really like teaching. I look like a kid so the students thought I was one of them until I started leading the class and then they realized I was serious about learning. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. I like the Florida lifestyle, I like the weather and I enjoy relaxing at the beach or by the pool. It is so different from New York."

"At UCF I am not doing organic chemistry, I am doing something else completely different which is also interesting. Now I feel we really need to work on energy issues for global warming. I don't know how many generations can survive if we keep doing what we have been doing. I am really interested in photovoltaic solar cells which utilize the renewable power source of the sun. This can be helpful to our society not just for myself, but for everyone, I really enjoy that." Daeri is pursuing a Ph.D. in Chemistry in the lab of Dr. Andre Gesquiere in the general field of nanophotonics, see here. "This project is very interesting because it is a totally new field for me; I have never done this before. It involves so many disciplines. I have been on the bench cooking things and now I am using lasers and other fields of study. I use a laser which involves optics and physics, but I also study polymers used in the solar cells which is material science and then I create materials at the nanoscale and test them with an AFM (atomic force microscope). It is amazing I can study nanoscale things, I am not kidding, you can not see these things (LOL). For me to see my nanoparticles I have to put them in the confocal microscope. Knowing what is happening at the nanoscale helps me make better solar cells." The multidisciplinary aspects of Daeri's research are very characteristic of many of the projects at the NanoScience center.