Emil I. Jaffal

Hi! I'm a PhD student at City University in NYC. My research interests are pretty broad, but revolve around using computational methods to explore novel materials and chemistries coupled with experimental validation, although I'm a bench chemist at heart.

I'm currently working with Dr. Anton Oliynyk on synthesizing and studying novel intermetallic compounds. We use electronic structure calculations and machine-learning (ML) methods to predict things like crystal structures, thermodynamics or magnetism. Our research focuses on intermetallics involving uranium, thorium, and rare-earth elements, with every ML model we develop being experimentally validated.

For just under a year I was a research chemist for the applications group at ICL. I pretty much made foam and burned it. A more sophisticated response would be that I evaluated a bunch of different bromine and phosphorus-based flame retardants for applications in polyurethane foams. This included both R&D and market support for customers, making sure various international safety standards were met.

In undergrad I worked alongside Dr. Julia Schneider to synthesize both single molecule and polymeric organic semiconductors and Dr. Joshua Schrier to investigate these molecules computationally with density functional theory. Our work was recently presented here on this and this as well as here on this .

Recent Work

XRD Matcher & Comparison Tools

The XRD Comparison Tool allows users to compare multiple .xy files from X-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments to identify impurities and phase differences. The XRD Pattern Matcher enables users to compare experimental .xy files with .cif crystal structure files for phase identification and material characterization.

High-throughput LMTO plotter

This script parses .csv files produced by the high-throughput LMTO package and automatically produces easily readable & aesthetically pleasing plots ready for publication, posters or presentations.

CIF Site Analysis

Contributed to developing a user-interactive Python script that parses .cif files based on structure type and creates a CSV table with compositions and heat maps for each site.

Composition Analyzer/Featurizer

Contributed to developing a user-interactive Python script that offers tools for generating compositional features. It also provides interactive tools used for tasks such as filtering, sorting chemical formulas, and merging Excel files.

CIF Bond Analyzer

Contributed to some troubleshooting with this project by Bob Lee, a peer of mine at Stanford. CBA is an interactive Python app designed for high-throughput extraction of bond lengths and atomic mixing information from CIF files, used in solid-state chemistry.

Hückel Theory

Used Hückel theory to explore isomers by analyzing frontier orbitals and their orbital energies. This approach simplifies electron behavior, assuming sigma and pi electrons can be separated, and helps discern differences in bonding and stability between isomers based on eigenvalue ordering.

Some Publications

Some Posters

Thumbnail for 2024 GRC Poster

Gordon Research Conference
Newry, ME — Jul 2024

Thumbnail for 2024 GRC Poster

Gordon Research Conference
Newry, ME — Jul 2024

Some Tutorials

I compiled some little guides below to streamline the process for anyone who needs them, feel free to check them out!

Using Gaussian Using VASP Crafting a Resume & CV Using Github Crafting a Website