Shantal Adajian

Bio:

Shantal Adajian is a Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate at UC Santa Barbara in Professor Bolin Liao’s lab. She grew up in Lebanon and earned her undergraduate degree in Engineering Sciences from the American University of Armenia (AUA). Her research focuses on thermal transport in semiconductors and quantum materials, developing experimental processes and uniaxial strain methods that let brittle samples be stretched controllably while measuring how heat flow changes in real time using time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR), supported by Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. By building reliable in situ measurements of thermal transport under strain, her work aims to improve the physical understanding needed for next-generation high-power devices and strain-tunable quantum materials. Outside the lab, Shantal enjoys biking, running, bird watching, painting, and experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen.