PNNL

Shannon Lee is a Materials Scientist whose research spans a diverse array of applications based mainly on the synthesis, advanced characterization, and development of materials. Her research recently focuses on hybrid solids that integrate both molecular- and extended- solid chemical bonding motifs, enabling the design of structures and precise control over physical properties including magnetism, second harmonic generation, and electronic/thermal transport. Her work emphasizes the development of foundational material design rules using basic chemical principles such as electronegativity, polarity, steric hindrance, atomic size considerations, and crystallographic disorder to guide the discovery of new extended crystalline condensed matter systems. She is excited about pairing synthetic experimental domain expertise to machine learning and artificial intelligence to greatly accelerate science.

Shannon is doing work on projects to support the missions of the Department of Energy (DOE) Basic Energy Sciences and DOE Isotopes. She has also been integral to the collaboration with Microsoft for Accelerated Materials Discovery. 

• Materials science
• X-ray diffraction
• X-ray diffraction analysis
• X-ray crystallography
• Scanning electron microscopy
• Solid state chemistry
• Solid state physics
• Glassblowing
• Optical microscopy
• Transport in materials

• PhD in chemistry, Iowa State University, 2021
• BS in chemistry, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2015

• Member, Division of Inorganic Chemistry, American Chemical Society
• Member, Materials Research Society

• Outstanding Performance Award, PNNL, 2024
• Young Investigator Award, Division of Inorganic Chemistry, American Chemical Society, 2022
• Noble Hines Graduate Fellowship, 2021
• Alpha Chi Sigma Chemistry Award, 2020
• Women in Chemistry Graduate Research Award, 2019
• Excellence in Teaching Award, 2019
• NASA Iowa Space Grant Consortium Award, 2017, 2018

2025

C. T. Campbell, A. S. Karakoti, S. J. Lee, C. Lapson, D. Reed, B. A. Legg, V. Murugesan, “Strontium-Enriched Barite for Enhanced PbSO4 Nucleation in Lead-Acid Batteries”. Small 2025, 2409902. https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202409902.

2024

Chen, C., D. T. Nguyen, S. J. Lee, N. A. Baker, A. S. Karakoti, L. Lauw, C. Owen, K. T. Mueller, B. A. Bilodeau, V. Murugesan, M. Troyer. 2024. “Accelerating Computational Materials Discovery with Machine Learning and Cloud High-Performance Computing: From Large-Scale Screening to Experimental Validation.” J. Am. Chem. Soc. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c03849

Soto, E., S. J. Lee, A. P. Porter, G. Viswanathan, G. Akopov, N. Hewage, K. Wu, V. Trinquet, G. Brunin, G. Hautier, G. -M.  Rignanese, A. J. Rossini, K. Kovnir. 2024. “FeSi4P4 and CoSi3P3: Hidden Gems of Ternary Tetrel Pnictides with Outstanding Nonlinear Optical Properties.” Chem. Mater. 36 (18), 8854–8863. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c01688.

2022

B. Courteau, V. Gvozdetskyi, S. Lee, T. Cox, J. V. Zaikina, Z. Anorg. Allg. “Ternary antimonide NaCd4Sb3: hydride synthesis, crystal structure and transport properties”. Chem. 2022, 648, e202200095.

Colin P. Harmer, Saeed Kamali, Oleg I. Lebedev, Shannon J. Lee, Raquel A. Ribeiro, Paul C. Canfield, and Kirill Kovnir. “Pseudo-Polymorphism in Layered FeS Intercalates: A Competition between Charged and Neutral Guest Species” Chemistry of Materials 2022 34 (12), 5397-5408. DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.2c00270.

S. J. Lee, G. Viswanathan, S. L. Carnahan, C. P. Harmer, G. Akopov, A. J. Rossini, G. J. Miller, K. Kovnir, “Add a Pinch of Tetrel: The Transformation of a Centrosymmetric Metal into a Nonsymmorphic and Chiral Semiconductor”, Chem. Eur. J. 2022, 28, e202104319.

2021

Georgiy Akopov, Justin Mark, Gayatri Viswanathan, Shannon J. Lee, Brennan C. McBride, Juyeon Won, Frédéric A. Perras, Alexander L. Paterson, Bing Yuan, Sabyasachi Sen, Adedoyin N. Adeyemi, Feng Zhang, Cai-Zhuang Wang, Kai-Ming Ho, Gordon J. Miller and Kirill Kovnir. “Third time's the charm: intricate non-centrosymmetric polymorphism in LnSiP3 (Ln = La and Ce) induced by distortions of phosphorus square layers” Dalton Trans., 2021,50, 6463-6476.

Georgiy Akopov, Nethmi W. Hewage, Philip Yox, Gayatri Viswanathan, Shannon J. Lee, Liam P. Hulsebosch, Sarah D. Cady, Alexander L. Paterson, Frédéric A. Perras, Wenqian Xu, Kui Wu, Yaroslav Mudryk and  Kirill Kovnir. “Synthesis-enabled exploration of chiral and polar multivalent quaternary sulfides”, Chem. Sci., 2021,12, 14718-14730

Philip Yox, Shannon J. Lee, Lin-lin Wang, Dapeng Jing, and Kirill Kovnir. “Crystal Structure and Properties of Layered Pnictides BaCuSi2Pn3 (Pn = P, As)”, Inorganic Chemistry 2021 60 (8), 5627-5634, DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.0c03636.

S. J. Lee, S. L. Carnahan, G. Akopov, P. A. Yox, L.-L. Wang, A. J. Rossini, K. Wu, K. Kovnir, “Noncentrosymmetric Tetrel Pnictides RuSi4P4 and IrSi3P3: Nonlinear Optical Materials with Outstanding Laser Damage Threshold”. Adv. Funct. Mater. 2021, 31, 2010293. https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202010293

S. J. Lee, J. Won, L.-L. Wang, D. Jing, C. P. Harmer, J. Mark, G. Akopov, K. Kovnir, “New Noncentrosymmetric Tetrel Pnictides Composed of Square-Planar Gold(I) with Peculiar Bonding”, Chem. Eur. J. 2021, 27, 7383.

T. Cox, V. Gvozdetskyi, M. Bertolami, S. Lee, K. Shipley, O. I. Lebedev, J. V. Zaikina, Angew. “Clathrate XI K58Zn122Sb207: A New Branch on the Clathrate Family Tree”, Chem. Int. Ed. 2021, 60, 415.

Justin Mark, Katherine E. Woo, Weidi Zhu, Bingheng Ji, Shannon J. Lee, Adedoyin N. Adeyemi, Sabyasachi Sen, and Kirill Kovnir. “Two-Dimensional and Three-Dimensional Tetrel-Arsenide Frameworks Templated by Li and Cs Cations”, Chemistry of Materials 2021 33 (12), 4586-4595. DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.1c01053.

2020

Bryan Owens-Baird, Jian Wang, Suyin Grass Wang, Yu-Sheng Chen, Shannon Lee, Davide Donadio, and Kirill Kovnir. “III–V Clathrate Semiconductors with Outstanding Hole Mobility: Cs8In27Sb19 and A8Ga27Sb19 (A = Cs, Rb)”, Journal of the American Chemical Society 2020 142 (4), 2031-2041. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b12351.

Justin Mark, Brennan C. McBride, Shannon Lee, Philip Yox, and Kirill Kovnir. “Synthesis, Crystal Growth, and Transport Properties of van der Waals Tetrel Pnictide GeAs2”, ACS Applied Energy Materials 2020 3 (5), 4168-4172. DOI: 10.1021/acsaem.0c00565.

Justin Mark, Kathleen Lee, Maxwell A. T. Marple, Shannon Lee,  Sabyasachi Sen and Kirill Kovnir. “LiSi3As6 and Li2SiAs2 with flexible SiAs2 polyanions: synthesis, structure, bonding, and ionic conductivity”. J. Mater. Chem. A, 2020,8, 3322-3332.

Bryan Owens-Baird, Philip Yox, Shannon Lee,  Xian B. Carroll, Suyin Grass Wang, Yu-Sheng Chen, Oleg I. Lebedev  and  Kirill Kovnir. “Chemically driven superstructural ordering leading to giant unit cells in unconventional clathrates Cs8Zn18Sb28 and Cs8Cd18Sb28”, Chem. Sci., 2020,11, 10255-10264.

Owens-Baird, B., Wang, L.-L., Lee, S. and Kovnir, K. (2020), Synthesis, Crystal and Electronic Structure of Layered AMSb Compounds (A = Rb, Cs; M = Zn, Cd). Z. Anorg. Allg. Chem., 646: 1079-1085. https://doi.org/10.1002/zaac.201900284.

2019

Dolyniuk, J.-A., Mark, J., Lee, S., Tran, N., & Kovnir, K. (2019). Synthesis and Characterization of K and Eu Binary Phosphides. Materials, 12(2), 251. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12020251.

Georgiy Akopov, Wai H. Mak, Dimitrios Koumoulis, Hang Yin, Bryan Owens-Baird, Michael T. Yeung, Mit H. Muni, Shannon Lee, Inwhan Roh, Zachary C. Sobell, Paula L. Diaconescu, Reza Mohammadi, Kirill Kovnir, and Richard B. Kaner. “Synthesis and Characterization of Single-Phase Metal Dodecaboride Solid Solutions: Zr1–xYxB12 and Zr1–xUxB12”, Journal of the American Chemical Society 2019 141 (22), 9047-9062. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b03482

Justin Mark, Jian Wang, Kui Wu, Jeane Gladys Lo, Shannon Lee, and Kirill Kovnir. “Ba2Si3P6: 1D Nonlinear Optical Material with Thermal Barrier Chains”. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2019 141 (30), 11976-11983. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b04653.

J. Mark, M. P. Hanrahan, K. E. Woo, S. Lee, A. J. Rossini, K. Kovnir, Chem. Eur. J. 2019, 25, 6392.

Shannon Lee, Bryan Owens-Baird, Kirill Kovnir,”Aliovalent substitutions of the 2D layered semiconductor GeAs”, Journal of Solid State Chemistry, Volume 276, 2019, Pages 361-367, ISSN 0022-4596, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssc.2019.05.016.

2018

J. Guo, Y. Liu, Y. Ma, E. Zhu, S. Lee, Z. Lu, Z. Zhao, C. Xu, S.-J. Lee, H. Wu, K. Kovnir, Y. Huang, X. Duan, Adv. Mater. “Few-Layer GeAs Field-Effect Transistors and Infrared Photodetectors”. 2018, 30, 1705934. https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201705934.

Juli-Anna Dolyniuk, Shannon Lee, Nhon Tran, Jian Wang, Lin-Lin Wang, Kirill Kovnir, Eu2P7X and Ba2As7X (X = Br, I): Chiral double-Zintl salts containing heptapnictotricyclane clusters”, Journal of Solid State Chemistry, Volume 263, 2018, Pages 195-202, ISSN 0022-4596, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssc.2018.04.026.