Mike Zach

Mike has had an interesting career path from student to sculptor/jeweler, back to student, grad student and now as a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. Directly out of high school he attended UWSP for a year studying chemistry, but did not desire a degree at the time. He attended a couple of other schools and eventually attended Northeastern Wisconsin Technical Institute in Green Bay for their Jewelry Repair and Design program. He apprenticed in Florence, Italy with a monk as a jeweler/sculptor gaining skills in design and manufacturing of jewelry. Upon returning to the States, Mike opened M.P.Zach Custom Designed Jewelry in Monroe, WI.

During the next six years Mike became very involved in environmental issues and after closing his jewelry store returned to UWSP to finish his degree in chemistry with the idea of helping environmental groups as an analytical chemist. As part of general degree requirements, Mike took many economics courses, several environmental courses and did a research project on electrodeposition of polyaniline which is a conductive polymer. This changed his career path to that of materials chemistry because of a realization that more alternatives are needed for making all the tangibles in our modern lifestyles rather than just finding sources of pollution.

Mike received his Masters and PhD degrees from University of California, Irvine in the laboratory of Reginald Penner. The combination of talents as a jeweler and a chemist proved to be very valuable by allowing him to design new tools such as electrochemical cells, fixtures for holding electrodes and analytical devices for measuring nanowires. Major discoveries included ways to make nanoparticles more uniform and making nanowires by electrodeposition and chemical vapor deposition. During this time he received numerous awards for teaching, research, instrumentation design and outreach.

Mike served two years as a Postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley in the Earth System Sciences department with a prestigious Miller Postdoctoral Fellowship studying the interactions of microbes and minerals and attempting to use biological materials to pattern inorganic components. His current position is the Glenn Seaborg Postdoctoral Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory in the Laboratory for Superconductivity and Magnetism

Email address: mzach@anl.gov