Gugulethu (Gugu) Nkala

Gugulethu (Gugu) Nkala is a postdoctoral research associate focusing on characterizing battery and pseudocapacitors with synchrotron X-ray. Gugu received her Ph.D. in Materials Chemistry from University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg where she studied the structure-property correlations of NASICON-type Li-ion electrolytes primarily using PXRD and PDF, supervised by Prof. Dave G. Billing in the Energy & Functional Materials Group. As a visiting researcher during her PhD, Gugu undertook research at the University of Washington, Seattle under the supervision of Dr Fernando Vila in the Rehr Research Group where she used computational FEFF methods to understand the local and electronic structure of doped functional materials, along properties in a multiscale approach with PXRD, PDF and XAS.