McGehee Group

Information for Prospective Students

A large number of students send Professor McGehee e-mails every year asking some very common questions. He has repetitive stress injuries in his arms that make typing difficult and cannot respond to all of these e-mails. The following information should answer most people's questions.

Professor McGehee plans to take two new PhD students every fall. He will probably not advise any Masters students. He typically advises two or three undergraduates every year. He only advises undergraduates from Stanford, unless a student from outside Stanford is admitted to one of the summer intern programs, such as the one run by CPIMA.

Most of Professor McGehee's research in the coming years will evolve from the projects described elsewhere in this website. It is hard to predict what new ideas might emerge, but they will probably lie at the intersection between organic electronics, nanotechnology, and renewable energy.

Members of the McGehee group work together very closely with each other and with our collaborators. Members of the group have come from the materials science department, the chemistry department, the electrical engineering department and the applied physics department. Students have come into the group having majored in any one of these subjects and done quite well. When someone joins the group, Professor McGehee assesses that person's strengths and weaknesses and advises them on what courses to take in order to have the right background for doing the research. He did not know what a semiconducting polymer was when he started his PhD research with Alan Heeger, so you shouldn't worry about not having the right background.

When a student joins the research group, he or she will typically join one of the subgroups and work closely with the older students during the first nine months while taking a full load of classes. During this nine-month period, the new student is expected to develop the basic techniques for performing research in the group and get a basic understanding of all of the projects in the group. The student and Professor McGehee will then determine what the student's research project will be. It is for this reason that Professor McGehee does not like to answer the question, “what would my project be if I came to Stanford and joined your group?” That question is a very important one that cannot be answered after a couple of short e-mails.