Robert Klie, PhD

Dr. Robert F Klie, Professor of Physics, specializes in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics and is a renown leader in the field of analytical characterization of functional and regenerative materials using electron microscopy. He is the Director of the Nanoscale Physics Group at UIC, the Academic Director of the Electron Microscopy Core Facilities at the Research Resources Center at UIC, and the UIC Strategic Lead for Advanced Imaging. Dr. Klie began his undergraduate studies in Physics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn, Germany and graduated in 2002 with a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois. He then joined the Materials Science and Condensed Matter Physics Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) as a Goldhaber Fellow, before joining UIC as an Assistant Professor in 2006. Since 2016, Dr. Klie is a Full Professor of Physics. He is also an elected Fellow of the Microscopy Society of America, and winner of the 2020 Microscopy Today Innovation Award.

Dr. Klie’s Nanoscale Physics Group pursues the development of novel materials characterization approaches using electron microscopy and their applications to materials for energy storage, conversion and quantum computing. In particular, his group has focused on developing novel in-situ, atomic-resolution characterization methods for liquid-phase, cryo- as well as high-temperature measurements of a material’s local atomic and electronic structures. Dr. Klie is also leading an effort at UIC in Functional and Regenerative Materials (FRM) which seeks to develop new materials for medical or bio-engineering applications to enable translational and applied research. The FRM working group is composed of faculty at UIC health sciences colleges, as well as the College of Engineering and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

Over the last 20 years, Dr. Klie has published over 220 peer-reviewed papers with more than 8,500 citations and has an h-index of 52. Dr. Klie’s scientific achievements have been recognized by a number of prestigious awards, including the Brookhaven Goldhaber Distinguished Fellowship, the NSF CAREER award and the University of Illinois Researcher of the Year award. Over the last 10 years. Dr. Klie has built one of the premier microscopy centers at the University of Illinois at Chicago with more than 150 regional and international users.

• “Dynamically Stable Active Sites from Surface Evolution of Perovskite Materials during the Oxygen Evolution Reaction ,” P.P. Lopes, D.Y. Chung, X. Rui, H. Zheng, H.Y. He, P. Martins, D. Strmcnik, V.R. Stamenkovic, P. Zapol, J.F. Mitchell, F. Klie, and N.M. Markovic, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 143(7), 2741-2750 (2021)
• “Chemical and bonding analysis of liquids using liquid cell electron microscopy,” P. Ercius, J.A. Hachtel, F. Klie, MRS Bulletin, 45(9), 761-768 (2020)
• “Machine-learned impurity level prediction for semiconductors: the example of Cd-based chalcogenides,” A. Mannodi-Kanakkithodi, M.Y. Toriyama, F.G. Sen, M.J. Davis, F. Klie, and M.K.Y. Chan, Npj Computational Materials, 6(1), 39 (2020)
• “Covalent surface modifications and superconductivity of two-dimensional metal carbide MXenes,” V. Kamysbayev, A.S. Filatov, H. Hu, X. Rui, F. Lagunas, D. Wang, F. Klie, and D.V. Talapin, Science, 369(6506), 979 (2020)
• “Hydrolyzed Ce(IV) salts limit sucrose-dependent biofilm formation by Streptococcus mutans,” L. Bhatt, L. Chen, J.L. Guo, F. Klie, J.H. Shi, and R.P. Pesavento, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, 206, 110997 (2020)
• “Mapping Thermal Expansion Coefficients in Freestanding 2D Materials at the Nanometer Scale,” X. Hu, P. Yasaei, J.R. Jokisaari, S. Ogut, A. Salehi-Khojin, F. Klie, Physical Review Letters, 120 (5), 055902 (2018)
• “A lithium-oxygen battery with a long cycle life in an air-like atmosphere,” M. Asadi, B. Sayahpour, P. Abbasi, A.T. Ngo, K. Karis, J.R. Jokisaari, C. Liu, B. Narayanan, M. Gerard, P. Yasaei, X, Hu, A. Mukherjee, K.C. Lau, R.S. Assary, F. Khalili-Araghi, F. Klie, L.A. Curtiss, A. Salehi-Khojin, Nature, 555 (7697), 502 (2018)
• “Nanostructured transition metal dichalcogenide electrocatalysts for CO₂ reduction in ionic liquid,” M. Asadi, K. Kim, C. Liu, A.V. Addepalli, P. Abbasi, P. Yasaei, P.J. Phillips, A. Behranginia, J.M. Cerrato, R. Haasch, P. Zapol, B. Kumar, F. Klie, J.T. Abiade, L.A. Curtiss, A. Salehi-Khojin, A., Science, 353 (6298), 467-470 (2016)

BSc, Physics (1998), Kingston University

PhD, Physics (2002), University of Illinois at Chicago