Kwabena Bediako

Assistant Professor
Department of Chemistry
University of California Berkeley

Webpage: https://chemistry.berkeley.edu/people/kwabena-bediako
Email: bediako@berkeley.edu

Kwabena Bediako was born in 1986 and is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Calvin College in Michigan in 2008, graduating with honors. He went on to pursue graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving his M.S. in 2013, and later completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2015. Following his doctoral work, he remained at Harvard as a postdoctoral fellow from 2015 to 2018, further expanding his research at the intersection of chemistry and physics.

In July 2018, Bediako joined the UC Berkeley faculty, where he established a research group focused on inorganic materials chemistry, electrochemistry, and low-dimensional materials. His work explores the fundamental mechanisms of interfacial charge transfer and transport in two-dimensional (2D) materials and heterostructures, with an emphasis on designing materials with atomically precise, modular interfaces.

The Bediako Group synthesizes and isolates atomically thin inorganic crystals and assembles them into multicomponent 2D materials with tailored properties. Using advanced nanofabrication, micromanipulation, and spectroscopy techniques, the group studies these materials in electrochemical and electronic devices to better understand their (electro)chemical and physical behavior.

His current research spans several key areas, including the development of electrocatalysts for energy conversion in fuel cells and electrolyzers, ion transport in 2D heterostructures for energy storage and quantum materials design, and the electrochemical control of light–matter interactions and topological phases in low-dimensional semiconductors and semimetals.

‎