David Hanifi

About David Hanifi

David grew up in Maine, the child of Afghan refugees who had fled Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. His family at first questioned the practicality of David's choice to pursue a career in academic research. They have, however, come to appreciate his love of chemistry.

As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, David worked on projects involving nanocrystal composites and the fluorescent labeling of zebrafish embryo cells. Arguably, his most profound achievements came while teaching basic chemistry. David wowed middle schoolers through local science demonstrations, and he and a partner devised a student-run course called Chemistry of Cooking, through which students not only learned chemistry but ate their experiments.

He holds a Ph. D in Chemistry from Stanford, focusing on near-unity emitters, where he developed a new, more accurate heat-out/light-out approach to measuring external quantum efficiency in quantum dots systems approaching 99.6 ±0.2% (1). Focusing on materials for spectral down conversion for solar concentrators and Q-LEDs led him to a role as an Emergent Display Technologist at Apple Inc. He has been working on bringing new small display products to market since 2021 as part of the team that brought you the apple ultra and series watch 7-10. He developed the OLED device behind apple's 10yr anniversary wide-angle OLED watch display (2). 

(1) DOI: 10.1126/science.aat3803

(2) Introducing Apple Watch Series 10